


Snap

by tysonrunningfox



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-19
Updated: 2014-11-16
Packaged: 2018-02-17 23:16:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 38,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2326718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tysonrunningfox/pseuds/tysonrunningfox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was just supposed to fix her back, and she doubted that at first. She definitely didn't expect to get dragged into the ethics of a girlish crush. Modern AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Whack

**Author's Note:**

> Stop. Before you read further, I want to make something crystal clear. This thing is silly, it's my emotions dump while I write other, serious things. It's funny and goofy and a little angsty, but nothing that isn't overshadowed by the smut. It's an AU, and I've really scrambled everyone around, and I'm having so much fun with it.
> 
> So now that you know what you're signing yourself up for, read on.

Hugo Haddock's dad thought it would be a good idea to get out of his comfort zone a bit, away from systematic deterioration due to osteoporosis and the pediatric spinal discontinuities that he's far too familiar with. Taking on a few sports patients would be a reprieve, a chance to talk to people his own age, as his dad put it. It's been quiet since medical school, a bit slow, horribly local, and at first the quiet was nice, it was nice to have the same bed every night, to know the way to the bathroom every morning without turning on the light.

But now, staring down at Astrid Hofferson's extremely typical file, he feels like he's reading a chiropractic text book. Lacrosse player, twenty two, hard hit from the right side followed by nerve pain in her lumbar spine. Knocked out of alignment, she probably has asymmetrical musculature from holding her lacrosse stick on one side, if she had her arms lifted it'd leave her wide open.

Case solved.

He feels like he's going to get a check mark rather than a smile or a co-pay or an insurance company pay out. This is…

The patient is twenty-two, what is he going to have to talk about with a twenty-two year old? She's in college, she's a jock in college. He knows that his dad just wants him to make friends, but the more he thinks about it, the more this seems like a self-serving set up. If he does make any friends, they'll be rehabilitated athletes, won't they? Referring all of their athlete friends and drowning him in the second largest reason he ever left Berk.

He didn't fit in with the football culture there, and he's not going to have any better luck with obvious cases of college kids who spend their time sleeping on crappy beds and throwing away perfect spines.

God, maybe he does need to have a chat with a twenty-two year old. He sounds like he's closer to seventy-two than twenty-seven.

Or maybe he needs to refer her to one of the many sports chiropractors in the vast network of business compatriots that he doesn't have yet. Of course. He stares up at the degree on the exam room wall, dated nine months ago, and wondering how he got in so far over his head.

He needs to start looking before he leaps.

His exhausted looking receptionist, Kathy, opens the door of the exam room and peeks in, breathing a little harder than she was a week ago. She's starting to look genuinely pregnant now, and it just adds to the stress, because he's going to need to find someone else in three months or less. Probably less, given his luck.

"Your three o'clock is here, doctor."

"Thanks Kathy," he smiles at her and runs a hand back through his hair, standing up a little straighter and following her out into the hallway, obvious patient file in his hand. It'll be an easy one, and his four o'clock is just Mrs. Jenkins who seems to need someone to listen about her cats more than anything. He likes hearing about her cats though, but she probably guessed that from the fact that there's a cat post in the waiting room.

He hopes that his new patient didn't see the post's tenant, because Toothless was in a real mood this morning and probably shouldn't have even come to the office today. He almost bit Gustav's little brother that morning, he's been such a brat today, this whole week really. Maybe switching brands of food? Hiccup swears he talks to the nice old lady who owns the organic pet food store more than almost anyone else, figuring out the dumb cat's hyper sensitive stomach—

He stops short as soon as he looks up.

Toothless is curled up and purring loudly in a young, blonde woman's lap. She's obviously in pain, grimacing and sitting with her back perfectly vertical, rigid and barely moving her shoulder to stroke the little black cat's fur. He couldn't have guessed just how beautiful she would be.

"Dr. Haddock?" She asks, almost cocking her head and wincing as soon as her chin twitches. Toothless rumbles like a pinpoint earthquake and pushes his head against her stomach, seeking out attention as much as comforting her. She idly rests her hand in his thick black fur and Hiccup cracks half of a nervous smile.

"He doesn't normally like strangers."

"Yeah, he just hopped up here," she tries to shrug and grimaces again, and it plucks something sensitive in the base of his chest.

"Toothless, get down. Yes, down—don't sass me right now, down. Sorry about him, that's about as trained as cats get."

Kathy laughs from behind the desk as Toothless jumps up and traipses across her computer keyboard, dragging his tail against her chin.

"Toothless?" His patient asks through subtly gritted teeth, pushing to her feet while bending her back as little as possible. "What kind of name is Toothless?"

"He's missing a couple of teeth," Hiccup shrugs, swallowing an unexpected nervous laugh as she hobbles towards him, chin confidently parallel with the floor. Her eyes are so blue that he might as well be seventeen again, staring at the cheerleading captain and hoping.

Twenty-seven, seventy-two, seventeen. His internal calendar is having a rough go of it today.

"No offense, but you aren't an intern or something, right?" She looks him up and down and it feels like he might burn his clothes off of his skin. "You just don't look old enough to be a doctor and…"

"First time at a chiropractor?" He asks and she pauses, probably thinking about nodding again. "You look like you're in pain, let's just go check it out and talk about where to go from there. I promise it'll be feeling better by the time you leave, alright?"

Yes, she's in pain. She's a patient and she's in pain, and he's got the file in his slightly sweaty hand that says she's twenty-two. And he's her doctor, not a clammy seventeen year old kid with hands clenched around his crutch handles, thinking about the prom that seems important for some reason.

"Fine," she crosses her arms, gingerly, her muscles pivoting slowly around her shoulders, moving in one jerky degree of freedom at a time.

"And we'll be right back here in exam room three-" he's mostly talking to himself, because she's not paying attention, and he has to remind himself to slow down. She's swearing under her breath and scuffing well-worn athletic shoes on his dingy carpet, frustrated like his father with a cold. She's used to being capable and it's a strange change of pace from his usual patients.

He makes the horrible mistake of glancing down at the seat of her pants and drops her file on the floor, accidentally biting the side of his tongue as he throws himself forward at the waist to pick it up. His own back twinges and he stands up more cautiously, peering at her attempting to jump and sit on the edge of the table and failing with a wince that echoes in his ribs again.

"Do—Do you have a step to get up on the table or something?" She scowls at him and her hands are shaking slightly. It hurts more than she's letting on.

"You can stay standing for now, let's see if I can help with the pain any," and in the moment that's all he wants to do. He wants to make her stop hurting, to fix that pinched and nervous expression on her face, to make her hands stop shaking. He walks up behind her and gestures for her to spin around and she listens, slow and lurching.

His hands land against her shoulders and she flinches, back completely rigid. He can feel it here, the athleticism, the fact that she's usually graceful and upright and capable. This is different than helping someone, it's fixing someone, and there's something wonderful about that. He can actually fix this, and she'll be better, it's not a maintenance problem.

He traces down either side of her spine and swallows hard when his hands brush against the swoop of her waist through her shirt. This isn't fair. There's something wrong about this, isn't there? He's enjoying this too much, it's like his nerve endings are sure that this is more than an adjustment. He probes a knot in her muscle, rubbing slowly closer to her spine and finding the kink, the entire time feeling like he's flirting with an exposed wire.

She flinches and hisses and his hands tingle, finding the out of place vertebrae. He plants his thumb against the spot and she twitches, hands clenching into tight fists at her sides.

"Yeah, that hurts."

"It's just what I thought, you're a bit out of line at your third lumbar vertebrae, deep breath," he waits for her to inhale before cupping her shoulder and tugging back at the same time as pressing his knuckles into the misalignment. It pops, muted and lame and she sighs relieved, slumping forward slightly and rolling her head side to side.

He yanks his hands away from her back as though he's been burned and she looks over her shoulder at him.

00000

It's like a week and a half of miserable tension is suddenly gone with that one little pop and she can move and breathe and think again without some invisible malevolent being jabbing a hot poker into her back. She looks over her shoulder, expecting to say thank you. Maybe even apologize for asking if the guy was an intern, she can't help it if she's not necessarily keen on someone who's new at this messing with her spine.

But the doctor who met her in the waiting room was twice as awkward and not nearly half as attractive as the one currently hovering behind her.

Shit. How did she not notice…that? Her back must have hurt more than she gave it credit for, because Dr. Haddock is something worth noticing. None of the gray hair, bad jokes and fatherly presence she was expecting when she saw the cat. She smiles and turns to face him, stretching her arms over her head in relief and wincing slightly when her back still tugs.

"How's it feeling?" He asks, taking a step back and setting her file on a nearby counter.

"Better, not perfect. It's still sort of—"

"Tight?" He waves towards the table with an asymmetrical quirk of thin, freckled lips. "I'm not done yet, that was just to help you get on the table. I forgot my stool today."

"Oh," she can't tell if she's nervous or relieved. As much as she does feel better after that first initial pop, she doesn't necessarily look forward to it happening again. But she's not entirely fixed either, and she'd like to leave without her straight-backed hobble. "There's more."

"There's more," he agrees, nodding and staring at her with impossibly green eyes. He's tall, a nice wiry sort of lean that's not normally her type, but seems to be doing something at the moment. He blinks at her and she glances towards the table.

"So, should I sit down?"

"Oh. Right. Yeah, I'll sit down—No, you sit down," he runs his hand through his hair and stands up a little straighter, gesturing again towards the table. "If you could just go ahead and sit down on the table, Ms. Hofferson."

Ms. Hofferson. That's her. She suddenly feels older than she is and puffs out a bit, pushing her girlish fascination with Dr. Haddock's razor blade of a jaw aside and nimbly jumping to sit on the edge of the tall table. Maybe this won't be so bad, she already feels impossibly more capable than when she came in.

Dr. Haddock walks around behind her, standing on the other side of the narrow, padded table and resting his hands on her shoulders with an electric jolt. She stares hard at the wall ahead of her and bites her lip, flinching when he pokes the sensitive spot on her lower back again.

"It still hurts. Just a bit, not too bad."

"I think—yeah, it's still a bit out of line," he grabs either side of her waist and she jolts, frowning when her back reminds her it's still not better. Lazy, stupid back. "You…ok, your shoulders are angled, if you could lay down on your front." He lets go of her and the room is suddenly cold, invisible drafts glancing across the impossibly hot areas he just touched.

She shivers and listens, placing her face in a padded cradle like a massage parlor. This is better than the handful of massages that her mother dragged her to as a teen, with the uncomfortably dark room and ambient soft jazz while someone tried to rub the ever present kinks out of her shoulders. Dr. Haddock walks up beside her and presses two big hands flat against the small of her back, pressing down like he's addressing the chest of a CPR dummy and her back snaps back into place with a firecracker pop. She sighs and winces as he touches the still tense muscles around the recent contortion and she tenses up.

"Loosen up," he urges, low doctor voice impossibly far from the almost nervous tone before. He can't have been doing this very long, he doesn't look a day over twenty-five, but she's been further off on guessing before. He could be forty.

A small part of her blurts that she doesn't care and she swallows hard, trying to relax.

"I've never had this done before."

"I can tell," his hand slides up to the back of her neck and squeezes absurdly gently. She twitches. "Your neck is a mess, this…" He fades out and it makes her nervous, like he's being delicate with her.

"What's wrong with it?"

"Nothing's wrong, it's just…If I had time or if you wanted-if you weren't here for a sports injury, I'd realign you fully. Your back should be fine, but I can't guarantee it won't happen again, your neck is twisted a bit and it's leaving your back open for another hit."

"It is?" She turns her head to look at him and he grabs the back of her skull, facing her back towards the floor and setting her gently in place. "I've taken hits before and this hasn't ever happened."

"It's something that happened over time, you hold your stick on your right side, right?" He walks to the base of the table and tugs briefly on the toes of her shoes. "Can you roll over?"

"Alright," she settles into the padded table and looks down at him, curiously popping onto one elbow as he grabs her heels and tries to square them with the edge of the table. "What are you doing?"

"Lay back," he gives her a wry look that's all green eyes and deep furrowed eyebrows, almost managing to distract her.

"What are you doing?"

As soon as her shoulders settle against the table he starts messing with her feet again, tugging them even with each other.

"I'm checking your overall alignment."

"Like a car?" She's a little offended but equally curious, staying as still as possible as he walks up to stand behind her head. The view is anything but unpleasant and she blinks, staring up the straight lined buttons of his shirt to that damn distracting jaw.

He places his hands against either side of her ears and starts rocking her head slowly side to side. The top of her hair brushes against the front bottom of his shirt and either she's crazy, or she gets a waft of warmth from beneath it, tickling the back of her neck.

She sighs and he jerks her head abruptly to the side, and it sounds like she's been shot.

"Fuck!" She swears, bolting upright and cupping the back of her neck with a trembling hand.

"Did I hurt you?" He panics and places a hand on her shoulder, and she shrugs it off, turning to glare at him.

"What are you—hey! That feels better."

He grins at her and her mind goes horribly, embarrassingly blank for a moment.

"Lay back down and I can do the other side."

"I didn't even know there was anything wrong with it, but now it's…" she trails off, shaking her head back and forth, up and down.

"I can't have you leaving asymmetrical." He grabs her shoulder, gentle but oddly convincing as he tugs her back down, taking her temples between his palms again and resuming rocking her head.

"So you're just going to jerk my head to the side again?"

"Are you always this curious?" He laughs, and she tenses against the movement, wringing her hands on her lap.

"No."

"I can't do it until you relax." His thumb twitches against her temple and she jolts, holding stiff.

"Maybe I don't want you doing it at all, that was terrify—shocking." She glares up at him and he pauses for a moment.

"You're going to be lopsided if you leave now, and if you're not coming back—"

"Who said I'm not coming back?"

"I got the impression that this was a sport consult."

"You said I'm out of alignment and susceptible to another hit," she crosses her arms across her chest and he reaches down, nudging them until she unfolds them to lay by her sides. He starts rocking her head again. "How many visits would it take to fix that?"

"I can't say for sure, I'll have to see how you feel after this. I will want you to come back tomorrow, for a second adjustment, just because this might readjust tonight while you uh, sleep."

Something about the pause brings her eyes back to his face, to the glint of big green eyes, big enough to make him look boyish, despite that sharp jaw. How did she not notice that at first? Seriously, she's always been one to cue on her target in a room, and she completely missed him.

He snaps her head in the other direction and two loud pops echo through the room.

She freezes and waits for her toes to go numb, every instinct pointing towards her neck being broken. He laughs.

"What?"

"The neck is hard to get used to." He comforts her, and she scowls at him.

"I don't want to ever be used to that. That's horrible."

He steps away from the table and she sits up, rubbing the back of her neck and making sure it's still straight up and down like it should be. He sets about folding her arms across her chest, so that her hands are holding onto opposite shoulders.

"It's looking better already. I think I can get a little more out of your upper back here though."

He walks up behind her and reaches around to grab her elbows, breath suddenly distracting on the side of her neck. He smells like hand sanitizer and copier toner, with an undercurrent of something electric and distracting, Old Spice laced with lightning.

He pulls her arms slowly to one side and her spine releases two slow pops from right between her shoulder blades, and it's like she can breathe better than ever before. The other direction yields a fizzle and a crack and she exhales as he lets go, her entire back warm and tingling where he touched her.

"How does that feel?"

"Better," she nods, stretching her arms above her head and sighing as sore muscles finally move after being locked into position for too long. "Much better."

He walks around in front of her and scribbles something in her file. She wonders if he has doctor handwriting, scrawled and illegible. She wonders if he's closer to twenty-five or forty, and if it's ok to ask. There are rules against dating coaches and TA's and teachers, she knows, and doctor flirts with that hard drawn line in her mind.

It wouldn't really be dating anyway, if she were only after that ass—Jesus, she somehow didn't notice that? Next time she'll accept the trainer's Advil if she was in so much pain she somehow missed the fantastically appealing curve of Dr. Haddock's ass underneath the tails of his white button up shirt. The sleeves are rolled halfway up his forearms, crisp and clean and setting off constellations of freckles.

He's got to be under thirty. Not that it really matters, legal is legal and everything is alright. She's just curious.

And like she told him earlier, she's never just curious.

Maybe it's something leftover from missing her initial assessment of the room. She was trying not to seem exhausted from her short bike ride over, breathing too hard through her teeth as she climbed the stairs, back twinging every time her shoe touched the carpet. And then the little black cat came out of nowhere, winding between her ankles and trying to trip her as she checked in with the receptionist. Her insurance card didn't make sense the first time, and she was nervous about calling her parents and explaining the whole situation. They worry more than they really need to, and it's not something she wants to bring up. They'd have a specialist all lined up by the time she was home for spring break and-

"Any soreness?" Dr. Haddock closes her file and looking at her, rinsing her mind with all that piercing green. She stretches again, and it feels like showing off. She's not sure yet if showing off is a good thing or not, so many blurry lines of etiquette are whirling around her brain.

"Maybe," she wrinkles her nose, leaning slightly right. "It's not bad, it's just a little…loose?"

"That can happen," he nods and offers her a hand. She doesn't take it, instead sliding to her feet and taking a minute to get her balance, hand clamped on the edge of the table. "All the tendons in the area are loosened from your muscles clenching to hold your spine in place. Now it's in the right place and everything is relaxing at once." He reaches out like he's going to steady her she wonders if her back is really ok, because she's oddly lightheaded.

"I'm fine."

"It might get sore later. If it does, ice it, but no more than fifteen minutes an hour, but I'm sure you know that." He glances at the clock and she follows his gaze. It's barely 3:30 but it feels like she's been here five minutes. "And make an appointment for tomorrow at the front desk, if it works for you."

"What about practice?" She thinks about how much easier it's going to be to ride her bike when she can reach the handlebars without tearing up.

"I'd rather you didn't, at least until I get another look at you," he says it like a recommendation and it makes her trust him. Most doctors tell her what to do, what pills to take, but he's almost asking. "And like I said earlier, your back might be better off with a few more adjustments."

"So no practice today, come back tomorrow?" She clarifies, letting go of the bed and smiling slightly when her feet take the weight without complaint. "Alright, I can do that."

"It was nice, uh, meeting you, Ms. Hofferson," he offers his hand for a moment but pulls it back before she manages to shake it, wiping his palm on the hip of his pants and shrugging towards the door.

"Nice meeting you, too."

She doesn't realize that the sentiment is genuine until she's halfway back to the waiting room, stifling a smile that doesn't make much sense in the first place. The receptionist is sorting through a stack of papers and Astrid sighs relieved when she notices the woman's large, pregnant belly.

She didn't notice that either. She was just in pain, she didn't go soft and unreceptive somewhere along the way.

"Feeling better?" The young woman asks from behind the desk, abandoning her stack of papers to stand in front of the computer.

"Much," Astrid nods, trying not to stare at her stomach. It's fascinating, because the woman is probably three or four years older than her, but in such a different place, so far away from life-changing tournaments and the thirst to prove herself at a first job. "He said to come back tomorrow."

"Of course he did," she shakes her head and starts tapping away on the keyboard, mild smile on her exhausted face. "Is later in the afternoon best for you?"

"Yeah, after two," Astrid leans against the desk and scrapes her fingernail over a dirty roll of paint stuck to the laminate. The front desk is a little shabbier than the rest of the office even though the waiting room chairs and exam table still smelled like new car.

"I have another three o'clock, would that work for you?"

Astrid nods and the woman starts tapping again, glancing up with a practiced smile. "What was wrong? You didn't seem so chatty when you walked in."

"My back was out of whack, or something. But I guess my neck was the real problem, it sounded like a gunshot when it went off," she shudders and grabs it again, still somehow expecting to find it bent and broken.

"That's my favorite part!" The receptionist rubs a hand over her bulging stomach. "He can't help me with my back anymore, now that I can't lay on the table, but I still get him to do my neck every morning."

"It needs it every morning?" Astrid grimaces and the woman laughs, clicking one last key and finalizing the appointment before turning back to the stack of papers that need to be sorted.

"Even if it doesn't, it still feels good." She hums, sounding tired and shaking her head, and it all hits Astrid at once.

Everything about this building reeks of family practice, the pictures of smiling kids pinned to the bulletin board above the counter. Probably cousins and nieces and nephews. A man with kind eyes who could be the receptionist's father, holding a little boy's hand. This has to be Dr. Haddock's wife, it's the only thing that makes sense. It makes too much sense.

The realization hits a little harder than it probably should and Astrid stands away from the counter, swallowing a flinch as her back starts to complain about being manipulated. Of course he's married.

The last bit of the tingle in her spine fades to nothing and she clears her throat, pointing towards the door.

"Am I good to go?"

"Oh, I still need your co-pay," she checks the screen again. "It looks like forty dollars."

"Right, co-pay," Astrid rummages in her wallet for a moment, searching for forty dollars in the small stack of the bills. "Can you break a hundred?"

00000


	2. Ding

00000

Chapter 2: Ding

00000

Hiccup has been into the Ship Tavern a handful of times since he moved to the city, but definitely not enough to be considered a regular. That feels like it might be about to change after a long afternoon where his hands wouldn’t stop buzzing from Astrid Hofferson’s pivoted third lumbar vertebrae.

There were ethics classes all through school, highlighting all sorts of improbable problems. The talk of almost killing patients to help them, all of those terrifyingly ambiguous medical issues that he was supposed to be avoiding with a chiropractic clinic. But no one ever really mentioned the biggest, most obvious taboo: the chances of being attracted to a patient. The wrongdoing so obvious and silly and confusing that it spawned a million gynecologist jokes because it would never happen to him.

He was going to work with kids and osteoporosis, and given that six and sixty aren’t his type, he was safe. But he just had to let his dad talk him into a sports clinic, the same way his dad talked him into a football uniform as a benchwarmer, and now he’s here and his palms are still sweating.

He was calmer summiting Kilimanjaro. He’s had fewer palpitations from a base jump. 

“I take it that the normal beer won’t do it today, my friend.” The bartender, Eret, who hasn’t really interacted except to nudge Hiccup towards lonely singles, leans against the bar and finishes polishing a tumbler with a dingy white towel.

“What clued you in?” Hiccup laughs, because this whole day is sort of funny in a black humor sort of way. The way that means his career is going to end on an out of place, adolescent high-note.

“You look like someone died.”

“My career is a little under the weather.” He laughs and Eret raises his eyebrows, reaching under the counter and pouring a generous two fingers of scotch into the newly clean glass, dropping a large ice cube in after. Hiccup thinks for a moment before taking a sip, because as much as he wants to pound it back, he should really be reacquainting himself with his old friend self-control.

“Practice not going well?” Eret glances towards the door as if gaging how much time he has before the currently empty bar starts filling up for the night.

“It’s going very well.” This is too ridiculous to say out loud, too infantile. But somehow it’s coming out anyway. “I just expanded actually, into sports chiropractic. And it’s sort of a favor to my dad, he played football at state and has a couple dozen coach friends in the area, and I was thinking ‘oh, easy money, realign a few tackled twenty year olds,’ but…” he sighs and runs a hand back through his hair. “But my first patient, she’s not what I expected.”

“She?” Eret cues on the point before Hiccup is sure he wants to get there.

“She.”

“Did something exciting happen?” The bartender reaches for the bottle like Hiccup might need more, but he shakes his head and takes another slow sip from the drink.

“Nothing besides feeling like a slimy old man putting my hands all over her. And she was in pain, so it was…I had to help, and it’s a really interesting case, maybe. I think. It’s going to take a dozen little tweaks and…I should refer her. That’s what I’ve got to do. It might be across town, or downtown, or in the next town, but I just have to refer her.” Those particular consequences make him wince and he lets a tired hand thud to the polished bar top. “And lose any business from state.”

“What do you mean by old man? I carded you when you first came in here.”

“I thought you were just flattering me for a tip. I’m twenty- seven,” Hiccup grumbles, because yesterday that still felt young. “And she’s twenty- two, and in college, and I’m her doctor, talk about conflicting interests. I don’t know what I’m even worried about though, it’s not like I’d have a chance anyway, even if it didn’t violate every moral rule in the book.”

And all he can remember is Toothless on her stiff lap in his waiting room, purring and comforting her even though he’d been an absolute brat all morning.

“You know, Hugo, most of the men who come in here are forty and balding, barely successful business men from the office complex up the road. The only thing holding you back is lack of trying.” Eret brightens slightly as a group of women walk in and start perusing the blackboard happy hour menu on the wall. “Maybe that’s the key. Try here and save all of your self- control for the office.”

“You’re just trying to drum up business,” Hiccup snorts and looks towards the women. “And I think you overestimate my prowess, but maybe you’re right.”

00000

Astrid feels even better that evening when the strange loose feeling finally subsides. She’s still icing it, because it feels more wobbly than strong, but it finally doesn’t hurt. She’s excited to go back tomorrow and feel better, so that she can get back to practicing. And she won’t exactly mind seeing Dr. Haddock again, with his reddish stubble and unreasonably warm, gentle hands.

And his young pregnant wife, who she can’t seem to stop thinking about. She must be proud of him, starting a practice so young. He looks too young to be a doctor, she’d be shocked if he were thirty.

But at the same time he’s old enough to be handsome, not hot or cute or—He’s married. She kicks herself, because it couldn’t be more obvious, ring or no ring.

Wait.

He wasn’t wearing a ring, was he? She didn’t feel anything hard or cool against her back in those few wonderful seconds after everything unpinched and she could breathe again. But it doesn’t matter if he was wearing a ring or not, relationships are sacrosanct and lines are lines.

But she can still think about it, right? That’s not bad, there’s nothing inherently wrong with being perplexed, it’s probably just a weird feeling attached to the fact that she was in pain and now she’s not because Dr. Haddock fixed her. Maybe it’s something more general about a guy who fixes things instead of breaking them. That’s probably it.

Ruffnut walks into the apartment with her lacrosse gear bouncing against her back and Astrid sits up with a slow stretch and wide grin.

“Your back is all better!” Ruffnut celebrates by dropping her gym bag on the floor and kicking her flip flops off of grubby, frozen feet. Astrid glances out the window at the sleet, more jealous than she should be. Splashing, freezing practices are the best, she can’t feel her hands and feet complain and always ends up playing better.

“Sort of. I’ve got to go back in a couple more times, but it’ll be better soon.” Astrid stands gingerly and picks up her half-melted ice bag. Walking still feels oddly precarious and she keeps her back carefully straight as she dumps the ice water into the sink. “But it’s no big deal, I’m just out of alignment, apparently.”

Ruffnut shivers and Astrid quirks an eyebrow at her.

“What? I don’t like the idea of some crotchety old doctor messing with my spinal cord. That shit is important.”

“And all those physical therapy classes are sinking in,” Astrid rolls her eyes, wondering if Ruff’s statement is even worth correcting. “And to be honest, not a crotchety old man doctor.”

“Oh?” Ruffnut flops down across the entire couch, pulling at her tight thermal layer and scratching her stomach. “Are you telling me that you found the mythical hot doctor?”

“He’s married.” Astrid scowls, not entirely sure if she’s disappointed or deterring her friend.

“He still has his hot doctor hands all up in your alignment.”

“He does.”

“Don’t say it like it’s a bad thing.”

“You don’t get it. I have to go back.” Astrid scowls at nothing in particular. “I’m hoping it was just hot when he fixed me, you know?”

“There’s a joke about drills in there somewhere, I just can’t find it.”

“Anyway, when I go back, he’ll be stodgy and uninteresting. It’s probably just the fixing that was hot.”

“I hope he stays hot. This story wasn’t very interesting.”

“If you want an interesting story, maybe you should hurt your back.”

“Maybe I will.”

00000

Astrid tenses on the table, hands coiled into tight fists by her hips as Dr. Haddock cups her ears.

“Relax,” he laughs, trying to wiggle her head back and forth and failing.

“Last time it sounded like a firecracker,” she complains, exhaling and trying to loosen the tight, trembling muscles in her sore neck. She feels better after yesterday’s adjustment, just oddly vulnerable.

“It’s supposed to sound like that,” he shifts his hands, gripping her jaw with long warm fingers. He wouldn’t be doing that if he knew how disturbingly good it feels, and she thinks about her pleasant conversation with his wife on the way in. Kathy. God, it’s all so picturesque. She stiffens further, shoulder blades aching as she presses them into the table. “Does this hurt?” He looks down at her so concerned.

This isn’t fair. She should have found a new doctor without a deliciously ginger stubbled throat and the inclination to stand six inches behind her head. To make eye contact, she practically has to stare straight up his chest and remember that if she breathes funny, she’ll smack her head on his belt.

And it’s infuriating, because she checked today, and he’s definitely not wearing a ring. It’s cruel, warping all of the rules and touching her like this with his pregnant…whoever out behind the front desk. Wife, girlfriend, it doesn’t matter.

Because he absolutely has to be feeling this too, if it’s accidental, it just doesn’t make sense. Her whole spine is on fire beyond its manipulation a few minutes ago, and he has to be doing it on purpose.

So he’s an ass.

It won’t stop Ruffnut’s hot doctor comments, but it’s a step in the right direction. Dr. Haddock is an asshole, a very attractive asshole, but an asshole all the same.

The easiest explanation is almost always right, and it makes a lot of sense. No one that charmingly, adorably handsome settles down anyway, not really. Especially when they have lightning fingers and jeans that look like they’ve been washed a few thousand times.

“When is your wife due?” She throws the border out there, anchoring herself on the right side of his electric hands.

“My wife?”

Oh, he’s good. That confusion is damn near textbook, eyebrows furrowed, corners of his lips barely turned down.

“Girlfriend then.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His hands are stiff and frozen against her temples, tugging slightly at the sides of her bangs.

“Your receptionist?” She raises an eyebrow that doesn’t quite manage to be accusing and Dr. Haddock laughs, waving his notably empty left hand over her face.

“I’m not married. And if I have anything to do with the baby, I owe Kathy’s husband an apology.” His hands fall back to the sides of her head and starts lolling it side to side. Astrid sags slightly, because maybe he’s not an ass, and she really doesn’t want him to be. “Does anything hurt?”

“No, it’s—” Her neck pops vibrantly as he jerks it to the side. “Ah.”

“Feel better? You’re carrying more tension here than I noticed last time. It might take a few more appointments to adjust it completely.” He wrenches her neck back the other direction and it pops twice more. Astrid exhales and shudders, almost losing her train of thought.

Almost.

“So you don’t have a girlfriend?” The question teeters on the way out, weighted and primed to fall like a hammer and shatter their almost comfortable rapport.

“No time,” he laughs and steps away, scribbling something into her file. “Sit up? I want to make sure everything still works before I send you home.”

“You aren’t as funny as you think you are,” Astrid winces as she sits up, touching the side of her loose neck and frowning. This is supposed to be making her stronger, but right now she feels weak and susceptible, like something is about to broadside her and knock her out entirely.

Something like Dr. Haddock being single.

“I’m hilarious,” he’s still using that reassuring doctor voice and it adds to the comment somehow, building him up confident and assured. He walks up behind her and starts touching her spine, the nape of her neck, the fan of her ribs, clinical and sparkling bright.

“Are you doing that on purpose?” She looks back over her shoulder, half expecting him to be holding some sort of electrode against her. He isn’t. Just three long fingers on each hand, tracing either side of her back.

“What?” It’s not the doctor voice, something slightly higher pitched, almost cracking. She swallows and frowns, staring at the door and trying to ground herself.

“Really no girlfriend, huh?”

“As flattered as I am that you’re so shocked, I’m not sure what this has to do with your back.” He laughs again, slightly squeaky and a little off-kilter.

She likes it way too much.

“I’m just…” she bites her lip when he almost absently straightens her shirt against her lower back. “You’re right. It doesn’t have anything to do with my back.”

“Alright then, you’re looking good.” He talks louder like he’s trying to retroactively fill the silent gap and she slides off of the table, pleasantly surprised when her back settles into place without the hitch that held it back that morning. “Make an appointment for Thursday or Friday on the way out.”

“How many more appointments do you think it’ll take?” She asks, feeling strange in either direction. She liked the hard line of an invisible wedding band and the way that it made this clear cut and impossible.

Now, it’s a little too easy to let her eyes wander.

“Honestly, it might be something that needs continual upkeep,” he writes one last note in her file before flicking it closed and picking it up. “But I should be able to clear you for play in six or seven visits.”

“Can I start training again in a limited way? I’m going crazy on the couch.” She has all sorts of junk food and confusing hormones to burn off. Not to mention that she will be on that field for regionals, and that’s not going to happen if she gets any lazier.

“Jogging? Stretching? Anything that’s not too brutal.” He grins again and she chews on the inside of her cheek. Whether it’s bedside manner or a naturally goofy disposition, it’s adorable. “No getting tackled. And while I’m at it, no tackling either.”

“That’s the fun part though,” she jokes, flirting with the idea of flirting. His smile freezes on his face, almost painful looking, and he flicks his head towards the door.

“I’ll see you later this week, Ms. Hofferson.”

00000

Astrid sits down on the couch, twisting back and forth a bit and trying to pop the stubborn knot between her shoulder blades herself.

“Stop shaking the couch,” Ruffnut jabs her in the thigh with her foot, lap filled with a huge bowl of popcorn. “You’re the one who wanted to stay in tonight, and now you’re making me sit through your fidgeting?”

“I’m trying to pop my back.”

“Isn’t Dr. Hottie supposed to do that?”

“It wouldn’t go earlier and now it feels strange,” she’s suddenly hyperaware of the vague constriction to her breathing.

“Loosen up around Dr. Hottie,” Ruffnut shoots her a devious grin. “Especially if you’re going to turn into a homebody and keep me here with offers of popcorn. Oh! But maybe you’re doing that for Dr. Hottie, so you can be super ready for—”

“Shut up.”

“Wait, am I right?” Ruffnut sits up, nearly spilling her popcorn on the floor before setting the bowl on the couch between them. Astrid eats a piece, chewing it unnecessarily slowly. “Did you cancel our plans because of Dr. Hottie?”

“Stop calling him that.”

“You did cancel our plans because of him!”

“No, I didn’t want to go out to some bar while my back hurts. Go ahead, if I’m cramping your style so much.”

“Cramping my style? How old is Dr. Hottie, because you’re talking like my mother. Unless he’s over fifty, I think you’ll have a better chance just being yourself—”

“Wow, Ruff, original—”

“—and dragging him off like a cavewoman.” The other girl finishes with a flourish and Astrid snorts.

“At least I know you’re not sick.”

“What is holding you up?”

“Nothing is holding me up from anything,” Astrid holds her hands out in mock surrender, pointedly facing the TV. “Sure, Dr. Haddock is good looking. But he’s my chiropractor, and I’ve got school to worry about and the tournament coming up, and I don’t want to deal with it right now.”

“You’re so practical,” Ruff sneers and shovels a handful of popcorn into her mouth. “It’s boring.”

“He’s opening up the office early for me tomorrow. I’ve got to go in before practice, and he said he’d meet me there.”

“That just sounds like a set up. He’s seeing you early in the morning on a Saturday. He likes you.”

“I’m pretty sure he’s just a sound businessman,” Astrid defends him, but it makes her sadder than it should. Because the more she goes in, the more that the spark seems accidental. “I’ve been a good patient. Hell, I even referred Avery, she’s going in next Wednesday for her weird shoulder.”

“I’m going to go and scope out Dr. Hottie. Maybe he’s not even hot and you’re just lying to me.”

“You know, I never even said he was hot. You just assumed that ‘not crotchety and old’ meant hot.”

“Look at us, Hofferson, bickering like an old married couple.”

00000


	3. Click

The parking lot is empty and quiet at seven in the morning on Saturday and Dr. Haddock meets her there at 7:01, stumbling out of his car and unlocking the front door with a jingling ring of keys. He holds the door for her and she leaves her gear in the waiting room, staring at her lacrosse stick for a moment before deciding it won’t be stolen. She has another one at home, a better one that she got as a gift a couple of years ago, but she doesn’t want to deal with asking her parents to ship it out.

Dr. Haddock looks exhausted, wearing an old soft tee-shirt instead of a button up, like he was every other time she’s been in. It makes her more aware of how alone they are somehow, like a window to what he looks like on the weekends. They aren’t even in the exam room yet and she’s already biting her lip. He sets a travel mug down on the counter and the dregs of what smells like coffee swishes around in the bottom.

“Thanks again for this,” she looks over her shoulder one last time before following him down the short hallway.

“It’s just half an hour early,” he shrugs and pulls his keychain back out of his pocket to unlock the door, struggling a bit. “That must suck for you, having practice at eight am on a Saturday. I never could have managed that in college.”

“It’s only every other weekend,” she stares at the shallow motion of his shoulder blades under his shirt, chewing on the inside of her cheek. He looks even better when she’s still tired and she wonders how far up his arms the smattering of freckles goes.

“Still, I couldn’t have done it,” he gives her a sleepy smile that’s almost admiring and her hands itch with the urge to shove him up against the door.

She needs to get back to her full workout regimen soon, she’s getting pent up in all directions and Dr. Haddock is about to suffer the worst of it. Not that she’d let him suffer. She’s sure it would be a pleasurable experience all around.

“I’m used to it. I’m just glad I can practice again,” she walks into the room after him and easily perches on the edge of the table, weighing the silence. It’s oddly comfortable, without Kathy listening from the front room. “So thanks for trusting me.”

“Hey, no heavy lifting, no tackles, if you want to go run around at the crack of dawn on a Saturday, I won’t stop you.” He opens her file, still on the counter from yesterday afternoon. “Right, I didn’t like how your fourth thoracic…,” he trails off before turning back to her. “This should only take a minute.”

Maybe she’ll have time to grab breakfast on the way to practice. Ruff would appreciate a breakfast burrito and maybe wouldn’t be so damn snappish the whole way home. Dr. Haddock’s hands land on her shoulders and her mind falls peacefully silent.

He’s standing behind her and asks her to put her hands on opposite shoulders before reaching around her waist and grasping her elbows, rocking her slowly to the right before twisting left and coaxing two sharp pops out of her spine. She sighs and he lets go, palm clumsily glancing across her arm.

“Other elbow on top,” he waits for her to make the adjustment before re-gripping her elbows and popping her back to the right. “I don’t know why that wouldn’t let go yesterday, but it looks good now,” he traces either side of her spine down to the slightly bunched up waistband of her sweatpants. She sits up straighter. “You have excellent posture, by the way.”

“Oh,” she grins a little too wide at the compliment. “Thanks, I know.”

“You know?” He shakes his head, amused, as he walks over to her file and shuts it, leaning back against the counter to face her. “So you don’t mind early morning practices and you know about your perfect posture.”

“I’m self-aware.”

“Very,” he looks at her for a moment and her face heats up. “You know, your back could have been a lot worse. If you’d flinched or tried to avoid the hit, it might have fractured a vertebrae or a couple of ribs.”

“I don’t flinch,” she shrugs and he looks away. “What are you doing this weekend?” The question tumbles out before she can stop it and Astrid freezes.

Nothing she found online said that there is anything explicitly illegal about this, he’s not her surgeon, but it’s still an obviously blurry situation. She doesn’t like blurry.

“Nothing fun,” Dr. Haddock groans and shakes his head. His hair catches the fluorescent light and gleams red for a moment.

“What’s not fun?”

“I’m driving home later, if it doesn’t snow.” He looks at the dark clouds outside almost hopefully and shakes his head.

“Where’s home?”

“Berk?” He shrugs when she looks confused. “Small town. Really small. Small enough that the whole town comes around for everyone’s birthday—”

“Is it your birthday this weekend?”

He rolls his eyes and turns to mess with her file, sticking a blank post it to its cover.

“And Miss Perceptive over here—”

“You aren’t excited about your birthday? Not at all?” She glances at her watch and lets go of the idea of grabbing breakfast, because this is far more interesting.

“Ah, after a certain point, it’s just a celebration of getting old.” He tries to brush her off, glancing pointedly towards the door. She doesn’t budge, heels bouncing off of the drawers of the padded table.

“Come on, you don’t get to say stuff like that until you’re at least forty.”

He doesn’t say anything and she backtracks, more intrigued than deflected. “You aren’t forty, are you?”

“No,” he’s offended, running an irritated hand back through his hair. “I will be twenty seven. But honestly, I don’t even have to celebrate it, thanks to my good friend the calendar skipping February 29th this year. Maybe it’s a sign and I should take it.”

“You were born on leap day? That’s—so you’re actually only six.”

“Six and three quarters,” he defends with a serious face before cracking that lopsided grin. “To my entire family, I’m the sole hope for grandkids, because my cousin is a little—well, I’m in for a weekend of the whole town trying to set me up on blind dates with Etheyl[DH9] from their book club.”

“So you’re hoping for a blizzard, I take it.”

“Yes, I’m heartlessly hoping to leave Etheyl dateless.” He smiles, so at ease in his tee-shirt that some strange part of her brain imagines him in her apartment, drinking coffee out of a chipped mug in the kitchen. “So now that you know what a horrible jerk I am, you should probably get going.”

Her watch is right, but five minutes slower than the clock on the wall that’s creeping up on 7:20. Fifteen minutes seems like a rip off.

“It only takes twenty minutes to ride over there,” she shrugs and almost lazily slides to her feet, shuffling towards the door and dragging out the whole process. “And happy birthday, I hope your family surprises you with someone you like more than Etheyl.”

That’s a lie. She wants to shut the door and give him a present.

But he should be with his family on his birthday, it’s only right.

“Thank you, Ms. Hofferson. Kathy will call you about an appointment sometime next week.”

And she almost hugs him, or invites him over in case it actually does snow. But something—everything about this stops her and she steps towards the door.

“See you then.”

00000

Hiccup takes a sip of his beer, smiling at nothing in particular and feeling like an absolute idiot. The bar is mostly empty, because it’s a Tuesday and most people don’t need a tall draft to calm their nerves this early in the week.

Astrid asked him about his birthday and laughed when he told her that he left a broken-hearted Etheyl back in Berk. She’s pretty when she laughs, less astonishing and more accessible and it’s not fair. Etheyl could have been a goddamn supermodel and he still wouldn’t have cared.

Because he’s so hell bent on endangering his career that he can’t have a meaningful conversation with the imaginary woman in his head. And he hasn’t been this happy in years.

“You look happier today, any progress with the lacrosse player?” Eret asks, arranging a rack of bottles behind the bar.

“What would make you think my happiness has anything to do with a particular patient?”

“Just a guess,” the bartender pours himself a short glass of beer and takes a drink, leaning his elbows on the bar. “Has there been any progress?”

“She’s my patient. And if by progress you mean alignment of her spine, then yes. Lots of progress.”

“And I assume you’re over here grinning because you won the lottery.”

“That’s…I told her about my weekend plans and she asked about it today. So it’s just a completely normal, human conversation,” Hiccup sits up straight and slaps his hands on the bar, drumming in an uneven tattoo and puffing out his cheeks. “A good conversation though.”

“She’s into you.”

“She’s not into me,” Hiccup rolls his eyes. “That’s ridiculous. She’s just a friendly human being and it was a refreshing conversation.”

“You’re a horrible liar.”

“She’s a friendly human being,” his smile falls and he takes a gulp of his beer. “I’m depraved. She’s amazing, she has the cutest sacrum I’ve ever seen and she’s brave and unflinching and I’m touching her all over on the context of work and…”

“You, my friend, need to get laid.”

“Tell me about it.” Hiccup sighs and crosses his arms. “And the worst part is, she’s really fun to work with in an absolutely platonic way. Everything moves the way it’s supposed to and there’s nothing wrong with her, it’s a problem that I can fix and she has the smoothest spine rotation—”

“Remind me never to come in.” Eret cuts him off with a booming laugh that falls short when the door slams open and a beam of light cuts through the dusty air. “She’s here, again? I’ll be in the back.”

“What do you mean you’ll be—oh, you’re not listening.. Of course,” Hiccup sighs as the man disappears through the back door to the kitchen, looking at his mostly empty beer and mourning the fact that a refill is far away.

A young blonde woman comes in and sits down at the bar, two seats over from him. She looks like she’s meeting someone, peering around the bar and searching behind the counter. She catches him staring and he looks away, hoping that’s the end of it, but he’s not so lucky and she stands, scooting down the bar to sit right next to him.

“You here for the show?” She nudges him with the point of her elbow.

“The show?”

“My name’s Rebecca,” she offers him a handshake and he takes it, regretting it almost immediately when she tries to break his fingers. “But my friends call me Ruffnut, so I might just back down if I were you, buddy.”

“What are you talking about?” He curls his hand into a fist as soon as she lets it go, making sure that it still moves correctly.

“Oh come on, don’t play dumb. You’ve got the perfectly messy hair, like you didn’t style it but it probably took an hour. And your shirt perfectly brings out those big green eyes[DH10] . You aren’t fooling anyone with that glass closet door.” 

“What?”

“The bartender,” she rolls her eyes and turns to face Hiccup entirely. “You’re here for the bartender, right?”

“Uh no,” he looks down at his shirt and tries to see what she’s cuing on. It’s the first time he’s been accused of batting for the other team. Not the first time he’s been mistaken for but…never mind. “He’s not really my type.”

“What? The top half of a fireman centaur, fresh from the dewy forest and covered in soot,” her eyes drift off for a moment, “isn’t your type?”

“Aren’t those two things contradictory?” She glares at him and everything about the mannerism reminds him of Astrid and conversations flirting with the line of being inappropriate. “He’s not my type as in I’m straight.”

“Oh,” she cocks her head at him, long blonde hair skimming the edge of the bar. “That is surprising. But hey, I have a roommate who needs someone a little more put together and a little less college locker room, I could set you two up, if you want.”

“Thanks, but no thanks.”

“Come on, she’s really hot, I swear,” the girl pulls out her phone and starts flicking through it. “I have a picture—”

“I’m not interested in being set up with your supposedly hot friend, strange forward girl I’ve never met before.”

“Girlfriend back home?” She asks, glancing around the bar again, and if he had Eret’s phone number, he’d tell him to run. “Wife? A charming illegitimate child, and you’re spending your last few hours of freedom before the babysitter goes home?”

“None of the above. I’m just trying to enjoy my beer.”

“Is that the IPA?” She nods before I do. “That’s what I got last time, it’s sort of our drink. Me and Eret, I mean.”

“Does he know that?”

“Oh, he will,” she looks underneath grubby fingernails and he can’t help but notice that she must be an athlete, probably lacrosse or field hockey from the muscles around her thumb. It’s something that he wouldn’t normally pick up on, but he’s so used to Astrid’s hands in his peripheral vision, distinctive, callused and somehow charming.

“If he ever comes out of hiding.”

“He’s hiding?” She perks up slightly and stands, glancing towards the kitchen door. “Is he dumb enough to hide in the kitchen? His face is perfect, but he doesn’t look like much of an Einstein.”

Maybe he should ask again about her roommate. It must be some sort of girl to put up with this all the time. Maybe she could put up with his unfortunate crush.

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Because you’re just a guy trying to enjoy your beer?” She raises her eyebrow at him and grins at his blank expression. “I like you, what’s your name anyway?”

“Hey, I don’t want to be the new object of your affection,” he laughs and she shakes her head.

“Not quite enough arms,” she bends backwards with a wolfish grin. “But the ass, that’s something to work with. Are you sure you don’t want my roommate’s number? She’s an ass girl.”

“No thank you,” he stands up, draining the rest of his beer in a long gulp. “I’ve got to get back home to that illegitimate child, also known as my cat.”

“Drive safe,” she chimes ironically and stares back at the kitchen door, ignoring Hiccup entirely as he makes his way out of the bar.

00000

Hiccup cracks his knuckles, remembering when his dad told him it’d give him arthritis, and from where he sat, bound by the ever convincing steel of his back brace, that didn’t really seem so impactful. He’s been dreading this day all week, because chances are his inappropriate affection for Astrid is going to seem more creepy than just misplaced as soon as he’s done with his next appointment. Astrid’s teammate Avery is here, at her referral, and her file is as typical as Astrid’s.

Twenty- two, injured shoulder from a mountain bike accident a week ago. Typical.

His sense of déjà vu is absolutely overwhelming and he tries to envision someone more beautiful, more captivating, more infuriating than Astrid in the waiting room, just to prepare himself. It’s impossible.

It’s probably just a fascination with young, athletic women, and he’ll have an awkward hour and be utterly over it by the time that Astrid comes in for her four o’clock appointment. This is a good thing, really.

Being a pervert is good.

He’s not a pedophile, they’re legal. By a long shot, four whole years.

He can’t tell whose eye-roll is more insulting in his mind, Eret’s or Toothless’s.

The waiting room is nearly empty and he looks around for a minute, waiting for the hammer to his chest. There’s an objectively pretty young woman sitting in the chair that Astrid favors, but his heart doesn’t threaten to beat out of his chest, his palms don’t sweat, he never loses that well-practiced doctor calm.

“Avery?” There’s nothing strange about using her first name, nothing particularly magical when she smiles. She offers him her left hand to shake, holding her right shoulder close to her side, he shakes it and smiles too wide when his hand doesn’t tingle. “I see that right shoulder is hurting you.”

“Yeah, and Astrid,” an unfortunate throb in his chest, “said you’d be able to help. Thanks for fitting me in on such short notice, I hate missing practice.” I shrug and beckon her back towards the exam room with a friendly hand.

He takes another minute to look at her when she’s on the exam table, almost willing himself to feel slimy. She’s looking around the room, reading the motivational posters, examining the diagrams about spines and hips and shoulders and he doesn’t feel anything.

He smiles in spite of himself, horribly, self-destructively excited for Astrid’s four o’clock appointment.

00000

Astrid curls up in a ball on the couch around her pint of ice cream and turns on the tv, curling her toes in her fluffiest socks and huddling down into her oversized sweatshirt. This is better than going out with Ruff anyway, it’s snowing and icy and she doesn’t want to put on tight clothes and go talk to men who can’t hold themselves together, let alone hold a conversation.

Plus, she’ll probably get to talk to one of those in the morning anyway, someone has to talk Ruff’s hookup out of stealing their cereal. Would cereal be good mixed into ice cream?

Probably.

Maybe she should have gone out. Ruff is going to some new bar where the bartender is apparently ridiculously hot or something, and maybe that would have been fun. Watching Ruff make a fool of herself is its own entertainment, and maybe there’d be someone there who would enjoy it as much as she would.

That could be a different kind of fun, couldn’t it?

She almost gets up and gets dressed, just to feel like it’s possible, but something holds her back.

It just wouldn’t really be fun. She wants to talk to someone funny and nice and mature, someone with more going on than some professor out to get them or some game that happened months ago.

Her back doesn’t even hurt after her chiropractic appointment earlier and it’s almost not fair, because she got all the enjoyment of those satisfying pops with none of the consequences, and she finds herself wishing that she’d had cause to ask Dr. Haddock for another Saturday morning appointment. And it’d be early, and Kathy wouldn’t be there and the whole office would be empty and quiet.

And maybe he’d tell her about his weekend plans again and wear a tee-shirt that showed a delicious length of lean bicep. And she could tell him about her lack of plans and they could make plans together.

Hmm, maybe if she called and said her back catastrophically cracked, she could finagle herself into an appointment tomorrow. But that’s cheap and cowardly and worse than going to a bar to talk to someone about what a nut Ruff is.

She should just talk to him.

It’s not illegal, it’s not. It’s ill-advised, from his standpoint, but no one would ever figure it out. Maybe she could get a referral to another doctor in the area.

Maybe she should just ask.

But what if he doesn’t want some college aged friends with benefits, and what if his ass isn’t as good without his jeans? And what if he wouldn’t tell his friend with benefits all about his weekend plans and hoping for snow?

00000


	4. Flutter

00000

Chapter 4: Flutter

00000

Astrid sits on the edge of the table and crosses her legs, staring down at her swinging toes for a moment before uncrossing them and leaning back, hands planted against the padding behind her. Dr. Haddock is taking forever and she wonders what he could possibly be doing. The receptionist took her back to the room today, and she’s already picking it apart, wondering where he is, where he could have run off to.

She’s still got that dream on her brain, and it has her wondering if she’s at all right, if she’s anywhere close to guessing what he looks like under his clothes. She wonders why she’s thinking about it so damn much, thinking about him so much. The way that he lolls her head side to side, making pleasant conversation in the few seconds before that delicious crack. 

The way his hands feel against her ears, against her shoulders, against her hips, so close to something worth grabbing before letting go with a crackle and a release.

She cracked her knuckles yesterday and almost had to leave class.

Dr. Haddock walks in a few minutes later, chart in hand as he jots down a few notes, letting the door fall shut behind him and greeting her with a pleasant smile.

“How is the back feeling? I wasn’t expecting you back so soon, I thought you were making an appointment for Friday?” He sets the file down on the counter and walks around behind her and pats the table, indicating for her to scoot back. She listens, stifling a shiver as his hands land against her shoulders, probing, cautious. He tracks her ribs down her back and she sits up impossibly straight, breathing in the electricity racing down her spine. “Tired today?”

“Huh?”

“Did I just ask myself how your back is feeling? Because I thought that was out loud.”

“Oh, it feels fine,” she actively tries not to lean back into his fingers as he ghosts her lower back, hands sliding to cup either side of her waist, assessing if they’re even.

“I thought I’d be seeing you on Friday?” She nods along for a second before he clears his throat.

“Oh, right. I…it felt a little strange this morning, kind of loose.” It’s a lie, she felt the best she has since the accident this morning, loose in the best way possible.

“That’s normal after an adjustment,” he presses his thumbs deep into that recently wounded section of her spine and her toes curl in her tennis shoes. She almost closes her eyes, and he hasn’t even popped anything yet.

“How long have you been doing this?” She asks, looking back over her shoulder at him. He grabs the back of her head and gently aims her head back straight, adjusting the back of her neck straight and tall with a careful finger grip.

“I graduated chiropractic school last year,” he slides further down, hands on either side of her hips. “You’re a little out of whack here, I don’t think I noticed the tilt in your hips with the back staring me in the face.”

“My hips tilt?” She wants to make it sound good somehow, and the urge to ask him if he likes her hip tilt is a little too strong.

“Don’t sound so worried, I can have you straight and even in a few visits, it’s a common problem, most people never notice but it can leave your back vulnerable.”

Guess not.

“You can fix it?”

“No problem,” she can hear the smile in his voice as he slides two fingers around the sides of her hips, towards her upper thigh, and she can feel his breath against the back of her neck. He has to feel how quickly her heart is pounding. She wants to point it out.

This is ridiculous.

“How many visits do you think?”

Really ridiculous. She needs to go out more, but between visits to Dr. Haddock and practices, she doesn’t have time to think, let alone accompany Ruffnut out at night. Not to mention the fact that she hasn’t been sleeping…

“I can’t be sure until I try a couple of times,” he mutters mostly to himself, stepping away and walking the long way around the table, stopping to stare at her chart for a moment. “Lay down for me.”

God, that sounds good.

“Ok,” Astrid agrees, swinging her feet for a second before turning to lay down with her head at the end of the table, shifting her shoulders against the padding to get comfortable. He walks over and stands by her feet, tugging on them and grinning.

“Loosen up,” he urges her and she exhales, trying to relax. “Thank you…and there we go…yup, right there, you’ve got a nice rotation in your hips.” He pats the bottom of her foot, almost friendly, very strange, and he walks up to her head. “I’m going to work top down here, so I don’t over-adjust, let’s see if it’s some sort of systematic kink.”

Again, systematic kink, this is all sounding really good.

He stands like he always does at the head of the bed, so close that she can smell him, like soap and hand sanitizer and something she can’t quite define. She breathes a little too deeply and fakes a dramatic exhale, shaking her hands out.

“The neck still makes me nervous.”

He grins down at her, cupping his hands on either side of her temples and rocking her head slowly side to side.

“You’ve been watching too many action movies. Trust me, your neck is a little stronger than one solid…” he twists her head to one side and pressure she didn’t know she was carrying releases from her top vertebrae with a gunshot pop. “Crack.”

“It seems like it shouldn’t be so loud,” she shivers, stiff under his grip when he starts lolling her head again, rolling it from palm to palm.

“Nah, those are the good noises. That’s a good quarter inch I just put into your neck there, you’re going to feel so much taller,” he teases, hand slipping behind her head to rub briefly at a her stiff muscle before returning to the slow sway. She exhales and he snaps hard to the other side, five pops ringing out in succession. She sighs and wipes sweaty palms on the sides of her jeans. “There we go, go ahead and sit up, and we’ll try to work that down.” He pats her shoulder and she grins too wide, sitting astride the narrow table. “You’re always so happy after the neck part.”

“Hey, you’ve only been doing this for a year, what if there’s still some neck-breaking tradition you haven’t heard about?”

“Oh, I’ve heard about it,” he walks to stand beside her, reaching across to grab her shoulder and pivoting her towards him, turning her chin with a single finger and pulling the motion through, coaxing three pops out of her upper spine. He’s magical. “It happens at your second anniversary, but it’s always a man in his early fifties. You’re safe.”

“That’s comforting,” she laughs, bending as he bows her back straight backwards, pressing her shoulders towards the bed until two more gentle pops slink through her spine. And she thought she felt good when she woke up. “But I won’t send my dad your way.”

“Unless he’s got scoliosis or osteoporosis, I probably couldn’t help,” he laughs, walking around to her other side and angling her chin again, finger blistering against her face. “I’m only now breaking into sports.”

“So I’m a guinea pig? That’s also comforting.” He twists her towards him, and her back releases further, bending more easily when he bows her back towards the bed.

“There we go…” he grins and helps her sit back straight, anticipating her bobble at the strange give in her tendons. “Come down here and sit at the edge of the table, knees lined up,” he instructs, again staring at her chart. She wonders what he’s looking for. “But yeah, I’m just breaking into sport.”

“What do you like more?” She asks before thinking about it, staring up at him as he pushes her back gently to lay down and picks up one of her knees, pressing it to her chest before bringing it up and out, leaning against it with his hips.

Whoa. This suddenly went somewhere…weird.

His hand is anchored on her thigh, keeping it stuck as he presses her leg…oh, really? He’s doing that, he mutters frustrated to himself and crooks her knee to a ninety degree angle, leaning on the back of her thigh for a moment until another firecracker blares into the room. He almost delicately plucks his hands from her and lifts her leg back to her chest, pressing it in multiple directions and inciting a few little crackles. He puts her leg back down and scribbles something in her chart before turning back and answering her question.

“Which do I like more? Pediatric is probably my favorite, it sounds…well, kids are more moldable, you know? Between my orthotics guy and I, we can really fix a lot of childhood problems.” He repeats the strange motion with her other leg and she can’t help but focus on the way that she can feel his hipbone under his belt, against a spot so high on her leg she’s not even sure if it’s considered thigh.

This hip is quieter, more of a fizzle than a bang, but he gets bigger pops in the other three corners of the compass, pushing from a handhold behind her knee with a firm grip.

“What after pediatric?”

“I’m coming to like sport,” he shoots her a glance she can’t quite decipher before scribbling something down and walking back over to her. “And pardon my reach,” he reaches between her legs and under her ass, hands wrapping around her waist and bowing her slightly. She barely has time to notice that the position elevates something very important towards his mouth before a pop explodes from her spine, reverberating alarmingly in the base of her skull. “There we go, full spine today, how does the lower back feel?” She sits up and shrugs, but he doesn’t see because he’s back staring at the counter, clicking his pen against the manila.

“What’s going on with my file today? You’ve been looking at it more and more, does something not make sense?” He turns around too quickly and shrugs.

“Nothing strange…it’s just—it’s like I said, you’re my first sport case, I’m trying to get my bearings?”

“Is that a question?” She laughs and he shakes his head, walking around behind her and grabbing patting the table in front of him.

“Back to me? I haven’t done your shoulders before, have I?”

“No…do they need it?” She listens anyway, spinning a quarter turn on the table and backing up towards that warmth. He pulls one of her arms back and loops his through it, pulling her gently up and in and stringing a shocking pop out of the joint.

“Feels like they do. That’s the thing about sport, it’s more trauma than anything else, you’re young and strong and you move like a…practice dummy.” He explains, grabbing her other arm and doing the same thing before touching her elbows together behind her back and lifting both forearms up at the same time. This is…this is oddly hot.

He plants the palm of his hand in the middle of her back and presses forward. Something she can’t quite identify lets loose and she yelps, coughing with the sensation reverberating through her chest.

“Ooh—”

“Are you ok?” He stops, letting her arms down slowly and walking around to stand in front of her. “That was a rib pop, the first time that happens it hurts a little bit—”

“I’m fine,” she shakes her head and takes a deep breath, grinning when she can almost feel her chest expand further, lungs stretching pleasantly. “That...whoo. That really opened it up, didn’t it? Yeah, that was a good one.”

He grins and her heart stutters in her chest.

“Careful. You’re an addict now, you’ll be back every week.”

“I’ll be back every day,” she jokes, even though it’s true. She’s going to make her appointment for tomorrow on the way out. “I can tell you’re excellent, but how did you get your own practice a year out of school?”

She finds herself leaning forward, interested in the answer as he goes back to check her chart one last time.

“I was lucky enough to get a loan on this practice from a retiring teacher, he had a lot of pediatric patients and no one else was interested. It’s not…the glitziest department,” he shrugs. Who pops his back? Is there a secret ring of chiropractors somewhere that all work on each other?

“It’s sweet.”

And that’s a compliment.

“I—It’s my dad’s influence, probably,” he’s still smiling, but he looks a bit more tired, a bit closer fulfilling that age gap between them. “He’s a small family doctor in a town about four hours away. And he really…it’s that whole, small town, cradle to grave sort of place and…”

“No, I get it. Following in his footsteps,” she fills it in, and he brightens for a moment before closing her file, slow and measured. “Is that it for today?”

“Yeah, make your next appointment at the desk…and yadda yadda, you know how to do this.”

“Friday, still?” She asks, sliding off of the bench and assessing for what feels like the hundredth time that she comes up to his bottom lip. She doesn’t know why she cares.

Everyone is the same height lying down, aren’t they?

And that’s absolutely all she’s thinking about.

“That’s three times this week, you can start to get sore from the adjustments,” he cautions, and it might be her imagination, but he looks hopeful.

“I feel great. I haven’t felt this great in…well, ever. Who knew four years of hard hits could accumulate?” She edges towards the door, taking her time.

“I did,” he grins cheekily. “Friday it is, Ms. Hofferson, I will see you then.”

“Yeah, Dr. Haddock.”

00000


	5. Clunk

00000

“So how did your hips feel yesterday? We’ve done them two days in a row, aren’t they getting sore?” Hiccup asks, setting Astrid’s file down on the counter and wishing he could shove a portable cold shower down the front of his damn pants. She must know that this is utterly horrible for him, she must know. This must be intentional evil.

Maybe it’s karma, and he killed a nice dragon in a former life as a knight or something.

Who’s he kidding? He was the hunchback of Notre Dame.

That thought cools him down enough to receive her answer and he gives her his most attentive face, trying to restrain his heartbeat.

“A little sore, they just feel so much better,” she shrugs and swings her legs under the table, back and forth, slowly like she doesn’t know what she’s doing to him. “I haven’t been this flexible since I was in gymnastics.” His face goes pale and he clears his throat, trying not to imagine her in one of those shiny little gymnastics uniforms. While being flexible.

She’s probably really flexible.

“You did gymnastics, I didn’t know that.”

“When I was a kid,” she shrugs. Never mind, it’s creepy to think about it. “I stopped when I was in high school, I got too tall and lacrosse was more my speed anyway.”

“You get to tackle people?” He laughs, walking up behind her and stretching her shoulders. Her elbows move easily and he manages one weak pop before giving up on them. Her neck seems absolutely fine, he grabs the back of her head and rolls her neck slowly, feeling for any issues or kinks that he needs to work out. She’s perfect.

Well, her neck is perfect.

Not that she isn’t perfect, he’s just not one to judge that. Her neck is excellent.

“Technically, no. But I do get to carry a big stick.” She can’t say stuff like that. That’s simply not ok at all, she doesn’t get to talk about carrying sticks. And gymnastics, even if she was a kid and that’s creepy. And while he’s thinking about this, she really shouldn’t talk about being flexible.

He should put rules up on the wall.

The Astrid Hofferson rules of chiropractic appointments: No being flexible, no gym shorts…he glances at her legs and wonders why the hell she’s wearing shorts in the first place. It’s March, it snowed a few days ago, it’s forty something degrees outside. No shorts of any kind, that’s the official rule. No daily appointments, no wearing her hair down, like yesterday. It reaches halfway down her back, an uninterrupted golden curtain, and she kept on having to pull it out of his way. He brushed a lock of it over her shoulder, and it was so unbearably soft and she thanked him—

“Are you alright?” She asks, looking over her shoulder at him with a concerned smile. “You seem sort of out of it today.”

“It’s just been a long week.” He shakes his head and reaches for her shoulders almost habitually, thumbs digging into her trapezius between her shoulder blades and rubbing. She’s carrying a lot of tension and he starts massaging her in earnest before his hands freeze against her and he plucks them off with an awkward laugh.

“That felt good, you don’t have to stop,” she laughs, arching her back towards him in a way that makes his mouth go dry.

“Sorry, I got distracted. Like I said, it’s been a long week.” He repeats the lamest excuse of all time and walks back over to her file, staring down at it and wishing he had a pen to mime writing.

“Seriously, don’t apologize.” 

Something about her voice makes him turn around and he can’t quite place her smile. It’s something past polite, something a little towards friendly and he laughs quietly.

“What do you mean, long week?” she asks.

Her. He means her. He means three days in a row of touching her and listening to her laugh while he adjusts her hips and very nearly cups her rear.

Three days in a row where he couldn’t sleep, either anticipating it or dreading it or thinking about it. Soon to be three days where he stopped for a drink at the bar on the way home, like the old regulars avoiding wives and loud children and empty homes like his. He almost tells her some of this, all of it, just to see what she’d possibly say.

“Busy week. It’s a good thing,” he smiles and she returns it, impossibly bright. “I’ve actually got two new pediatric patients, and that’s always hard. Kids are always scared the first time.”

“It’s not scary.”

“Says the woman who still squeaks when I pop her neck.”

She glares at him and crosses her arms, raising an offended eyebrow. “I’m just telling the truth.” He has to look away, scuffing the toe of his brown leather shoe on the carpet. “Nah, I like first appointments with kids though. They bring Toothless back into the exam room and pet him. I’d like to think that having a cat turns me from a scary doctor to something more…human.”

“You aren’t a scary doctor.”

“You aren’t seven.”

“That young, huh?” She frowns, eyebrows wonderfully expressive above pools of blue and he keeps talking, even though he should be popping her hips and pretending it’s not grabbing her ass.

“They’re the lucky ones. When they’ve got a congenital back issue, they have to get in early. It really helps them later in life.”

“You really like your job, don’t you?” She smiles at him again, a different brand of strange.

“Wow, I—I think that’s the first time anyone has ever pointed that out—”

“Do you really have to be so sarcastic all the time?—”

“No, not sarcasm at all. I honestly don’t think anyone’s ever—I do like it. I really like it, it’s…it’s all the good parts of medicine. I can only help, you know?”

“I do,” she smiles with one corner of her mouth, obviously sincere. “I didn’t even know how messed up my skeleton was until you started fixing it.”

“You’re not messed up, you just have a sensitive sacroiliac joint that’s prone to rotation.”

“You lost me,” she grins and he blushes, turning halfway around before thinking about it and pointing to the very base of his spine. She looks and he turns back to face her, swallowing a nervous laugh.

“Sorry, I’m really out of sorts today—anyway, the sacroiliac joint is where your spine joins to your hips. Yours tends to rotate to the right, it’s probably just in the way you walk, the way your musculature is.”

She pauses to think for a moment, nodding along.

“Where is it again?”

“The very base of your spine,” he laughs and runs a hand back through his hair. His next appointment will be here in fifteen minutes, and he’s mortified at the direction of this conversation, but he doesn’t want her to leave.

“So tailbone area or what?”

“Sort of—”

“It’s easier when you just show me.” She blinks at him and he doesn’t move. “Can you show me on me?” She points to her hips and wrinkles her nose, thinking hard. “I know these are my iliac…areas. So it’s where my hips meet the base of my spine?”

He nods and she smiles again. “Oh, so it’s were my hips meet my spine in the back,” she slides off of the table and turns her back towards him, reaching around to point at a spot right above the surprisingly low slung waistband of her gym shorts. “Somewhere right around here?”

His mouth goes dry. He swallows hard and tries not to think that she’s the perfect height that he could just walk up behind her and— no.

Does the doctor-patient relationship mean nothing to him?

Apparently not.

“Exactly,” he pretends to note something in her file, trying to slow down his breathing. “That’s your sacrum, and it’s joining with your ilia—your hips—so it’s the sacroiliac joint. Scientists aren’t horribly creative when it comes to naming. Normally. When they are it’s sort of a pain. I think.” He can’t seem to shove his foot in his mouth fast enough, “It’s just kind of a personal opinion, I guess—can you straddle—can you sit back down? One foot on either side of the table?”

She grins at him again before following the instruction and sitting in the middle of the table with one leg on either side.

“My hips need it again?”

“Maybe? They’re a little out of whack in the opposite direction, I might have overdone it yesterday, sorry about that.”

“No need to apologize. These things take time,” she’s too comfortable, sitting upright with her damn perfect posture and staring at him. God, those shorts are short for March. They’re short for August, but even shorter for March.

No shorts, it should be an overall rule. Number one on the Astrid Hofferson list of chiropractic rules. Number zero.

“Alright then,” he rubs his hands together for a second, until it strikes him that they’ll be warm against her skin and maybe that’s what he’s going for. He wipes them on the sides of his jeans and steps up, gently asking her to lay back and bending her knee towards her chest. He averts his eyes from her legs entirely, tries to stop thinking about the soft, silky skin of her calf and the back of her thigh against his fingers.

Her hips pops and she sighs. He nearly drops her. “Probably just one more on this side,” he bends her leg out to the side and holds her knee at ninety degrees, hooking one hand behind her knee and pushing it up gently towards her head.

She is flexible.

He can’t think about that.

Her hip pops again and she shifts, centering herself on the table. “And other side.” Her other leg behaves similarly, and his hands are on fire from the contact when he lets go. He rubs his wrists and stares at her file as she sits up, stretching her arms over her head.

He peeks through the corner of his eye and curses himself, shutting her file with a flushed red hand.

She can’t know what she’s doing. He hopes she doesn’t. He hopes it’s all in his head, and just something to deal with. Silently and suffering.

“Much better. Thank you for that.”

“It’s my job.”

“When should I come back?” She grins at him, swinging one long leg over the table to sit on the edge facing the door. He’s going to be up all night thinking of long, pale legs. Perfectly muscled and trim and…

She asked him a question.

He should probably answer that.

“Come back? Probably next Monday or Tuesday. But honestly, I should be able to clear you soon, it’s looking really good.”

She grins at the compliment. 

“Nothing like the pinched lumbar nerve I first met. In fact your lumbar spine looks pretty perfect, not that there’s anything wrong with your thoracic spine or anything—” he stops and exhales before continuing. “Oh wow, look at the time. It’s a…time.”

“You are out of sorts today.”

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s…it’s cute.”

“I think you got me confused with my cat, he’ll receive compliments at the front door.”

She seems to think for a minute before jumping down from the table and taking two slow steps towards the door. Her fingers twitch at her sides, nearly an involuntary muscle spasm, and she squints at him for a second, biting her lip.

“So…unless something comes up, I’ll see you next week.”

“What could possibly come up?” He smiles and she returns it, lower lip slipping out from between her teeth.

“I could think up another compliment for Toothless, I guess. Or you.”

Kathy knocks on the door and says that his next appointment is here. He must have heard wrong anyway, that’s an absolutely bizarre thing for her to say, it makes no sense.

“I’ll see you next week, Ms. Hofferson.”

“Ok, Dr. Haddock. I’ll see you then.”

00000

“It’s looking really good, Astrid.” He flicks through her file and sets it down, walking towards her and tilting her chin up. It aims her face directly at his and she lets herself look while he’s distracted, eyes tracing the strong line of his brow and nose, connecting the freckles along his cheekbones. “I’m not really seeing anything out of place right now, your hips are perfect and your spine is in alignment. I’m going to say one more time this week and then I should be able to clear you for play.”

“Really?” She sits up a little straighter and focuses on his big green eyes, despite the impossibly warm hand still against her chin. He seems to notice that he’s still touching her and lets go with an adorable hint of a blush.

It makes her want to give him a reason to blush.

Either she’s going crazy or he looks better today than normal. It could be her weekend at home, without human contact aside from Ruff and an awkward bowl of cheerios across from her roommate’s Saturday night hook up, but Dr. Haddock looks really, really nice today. Maybe it’s the mint green pin striped button down, it must set off his eyes. And his freckles.

She bites her lip and watches the slow bend of his arm, the delicious clench of his bicep against the crisp, slim-fitting fabric of his cotton shirt.

“Really, I think it’s looking great. Just one more appointment.” It feels like an ultimatum and her stomach churns slightly.

She hasn’t been out in the last two weekends, now that she thinks about it. And the one before it was unsuccessful, everyone around her seemed bland and loud and drunk and stupid. Maybe they were bland and loud and drunk and stupid. Maybe she’s getting too old to meet guys in bars, and she should start trying libraries or 24 hour fitness or…the aquarium. She doesn’t know; bars have always been successful since she started trying.

Huh, and the weekend before that, she kept Ruff home and got herself amped up for her Saturday appointment with Dr. Haddock. It seems like longer than that, sitting on this table early in the morning all alone with him and talking about family.

God, no wonder she’s having issues with his big green eyes. It’s been a while.

The weekend before her Saturday appointment, her back hurt and that was a no go, not to mention it was Valentine’s Day and she didn’t want to give anyone the wrong idea. He clinically touches either side of her waist, probing gently against the base of her ribs. She shivers.

“Just one more, huh?”

“Until I clear you for competition,” his eyes flick to hers and he holds her gaze for a moment too long. “I’m not that great at my job, I’m sure you’ll get knocked out of whack at some point and come right back…unless they’re recommending a better chiropractor over at State by then.”

“Why are you so down on yourself?”

“That’s a loaded question,” he laughs and walks around behind her, placing gently hands on her hips and holding them even against the surface of the tables.

“Seriously, I think you’re great…at being a chiropractor.” She catches her mistake and sits up straight. His breath tickles the back of her neck and she bites the inside of her cheek.

“Well, thank you. It’s a…frankly, it’s a loaded job choice and there’s history behind it and I’m...nervous to be taking over someone’s practice just a year out of school and I’m venting. I’m sorry.”

“I’m a good listener,” she offers, looking back at him over her shoulder. “If you ever wanted to vent outside of your office. Sometime.” She waits for a long moment before continuing. “I could buy you a drink, maybe. My apartment is…busy, but you could come over sometime.”

“That’s why I got the cat.” 

“Isn’t drinking with a cat animal abuse?” She tries so earnestly not to be miffed, exhaling a shaky sigh as his hand follow a slow line up to her waist. He presses gently into the curve before pulling away and leaving her squirming.

“Not if it’s milk,” he glances over at her, and it reminds her of a professor glaring at someone chatting in the back of the room. “And you know I can’t take you up on that.” 

“Fair enough,” she looks away, biting the inside of her cheek. 

“Anyway, I really do appreciate the offer,” he shrugs a bit sheepish. “But I vent too much with you anyway, you’re paying to get adjusted, not hear about my life problems.”

“I’m sure you could come up with some way to pay me for all the venting.” She grins and he blushes so cutely that she’s sure he’s going to say yes. He glances down at his feet and she slides down off of the table. He doesn’t say anything at all, “one more appointment this week then?”

One last chance after today, until it’s staging interceptions in bars and wondering why she didn’t just grab him and kiss him in the first place.

Why did she ever think he was married? He’s obviously too clueless and handsome and…

“One more appointment,” he nods, too serious. “Unless you take another hit, I guess.”

“I won’t.” Because that would be the easy way to do this, the cheap way. Only losers need to buy more time on the clock.

She gives him a grin and stares pointedly at the curve of his ass for a moment before walking more confidently towards the door. “I’ll see you then, Dr. Haddock.”

“Ms. Hofferson.”

00000

“I’m going to go ahead and clear you for the tournament,” Hiccup sets the file down with a smile after a moment of joking deliberation. Astrid sits up straight and grins, sliding off of the table and rolling her head from side to side, stretching out her recently relieved joints.

She’d been assuming this would fall through somehow. The best reason would have been that he came to his senses and decided to take his easy way out and keep her coming in. She wouldn’t have stood for it of course, because she needs to play in this tournament and she can’t lose sight of that, but it would have been good to have some affirmation before she does something crazy today.

Last appointment, just the phrase sounds bittersweet.

“Really? I’m clear?” She makes sure she knows what she’s hearing, feeling strong and sure for the first time in weeks. “I can play in the tournament tomorrow? Assuming my coach lets me but—really?” He smiles and nods before the expression falters, freckles on his cheeks drooping with a strange little frown. He’s more handsome than ever.

“Yeah, you’re looking great. I might want to see you back afterwards, if you take any hard hits, but I’m going to say that you’re aligned.” He says it like a joke, and she laughs even though it isn’t funny, stepping away from the table. 

“So I guess this is it, then.”

“Oh, come on, Astrid. You’ll be around, I’m sure you’ll need a shoulder popped in a few weeks after punching someone.” His first mistake is resting a not quite platonic hand against her upper arm. She bites her lip and he blanches, hand slipping off of her. She misses it instantly. “And your lumbar spine is probably always going to be a weak spot, you’ll be in and out of this office—”

“Dr. Haddock, I—” It’s not worth talking about first. She leans in and kisses him, gripping his shoulder for balance and pressing herself closer when he doesn’t immediately respond. But then he does, soft and almost uncomfortably sweet as his hand finds her waist, respectful and warm. God, it’s better than thinking about it, his mouth fits against hers in a too familiar way and it feels like she’s been doing this for years, forever.

He’s not so much returning the affection as welcoming it and it sucks the air from her lungs. She wishes the room were darker, warmer, closer, anything but the clinical light shining on the side of her face. It’s too loud and not private enough, he might respond in full if they were somewhere isolated. She gasps into his mouth and his hand freezes against her side, warm and dense.

Her hand wraps around the back of his neck and he jerks away, dropping his hand from her hip like she burned him.

“Ms. Hofferson, this isn’t appropriate—”

“If I get a hard hit,” she cuts him off and steps back, licking her lips and breathing too hard. “I’ll call and get an appointment.” She leaves before he can say anything else, slipping out into the hallway and pausing briefly to lean against the wall. She wonders if his knees feel unstable too, or if that’s just her.

00000

Astrid checks her phone on the bus back from the game, resting her feet on the seat ahead of her and frowning at the voicemail from Dr. Haddock’s office, left yesterday evening while she was trying to clear her head and focus. She elbows Ruffnut to shut her up and presses play, holding the phone to her ear as a blanket of dread settles in the pit of her stomach. She remembers the feeling of Dr. Haddock’s lips on hers, his initial hesitance. 

‘Hi, Astrid, this is Kathy from Dr. Haddock’s office, he has just informed me that he can’t treat you as a patient anymore due to personal reasons and he wanted me to pass along this list of referrals in the area. There’s Dr. Jameson in Lakewood, his phone number is…” 

She sets the phone down on her lap and wipes her hand across her face, pressing the pads of her fingers to her eyelids and groaning, head falling back against the seat. 

Great. 

Personal reasons, like that’s not horribly obvious and frustrating and—Great. Just great. 

“Everything ok?” Ruffnut asks, picking up her friend’s phone and checking for any incriminating texts. Astrid snatches it back and deletes the voicemail, deleting the contact number while she’s at it. It feels better to burn this bridge than fix it, even though she’s still absolutely stuck on that kiss. 

He must have felt it too, at least. If he hadn’t cared, he could have just shut her down and…

“Everything is great,” she lies. “Perfect. We’re going out to celebrate tonight, aren’t we?” 

“Of course, I’m thinking that new bar I found with the delicious bartender. Why? Are you in?”

“Absolutely,” she wipes her hand down her face and swallows, trying to forget how it felt yesterday, the whole month. “I’m in. Let’s go get you a bartender.” 

00000


	6. Fizz

00000

Chapter 6: Fizz

00000

“You’re a good man,” Eret shakes his head and overfills Hiccup’s glass. “I’m completely prepared to comp your tab and call you a taxi.”

“I don’t need that,” Hiccup waves the man off, staring at the amber liquid. “I just need…Doing the right thing feels really fucking shitty sometimes, no one ever tells you that.” 

“Hey, she’s not your patient anymore—”

“It doesn’t matter though, she was my patient. I met her when she was my patient, I know all sorts of intimate things about her that are completely unethical and—It’s off of the table. And I just need to stop thinking about her and that kiss—” He scratches the top of his head. “Nope, I’m done. It’s time to be done.” 

“The offer for the taxi is here if you need it.” 

“Thanks.” 

Hiccup stares at the bar, trying not to think about how Astrid felt pressed against him the day before. It’s wrong and bad and he dealt with it, but it still feels dirty. Even though he’s never going to see her again, and he chose the high road over all that business from State, he still has his memory, and he can’t scrub that clean. He’s never going to forget what it felt like when she asked about his weekend or how her shoulders felt under his hands. 

He should have cut this off sooner, he should have cut it off instantly. He used to be smarter than this, he used to understand that he knew things about people that they didn’t tell him, and that meant he was in a position of power. But somehow everyone else’s secrets are locked in a doctor-patient confidentiality vault while Astrid’s are nestled somewhere else. Somewhere private and inappropriate and downright painful. 

He dealt with it. He dealt with it and he just needs to move on. He referred her, she’s a smart girl and she’ll call one of those other excellently recommended doctors and get her back addressed. 

He hopes she won her game. He should drink more. 

Eret comes back over to stand in front of him, like he’s wondering if it’s already time for a taxi. Hiccup picks up his glass and shakes it to indicate it’s only half empty and the other man sighs, glancing down the bar at a gaggle of laughing young women. 

“Not to be insensitive, but aside from the psycho, the rest of the girls over there are hot and normal, so far. And while I can’t guarantee it…”

“Thanks, Eret, really. I just—I might go home, I just need to sleep this off. All weekend.”

“With your cat and a bottle of wine?”

“I think you’re the only person who truly understands me,” he manages a wry smile and takes a sip of his drink. “And it’s so messed up. I should have referred her the second I saw her, told her that I couldn’t deal with her problem. I enjoyed touching her.”

“It seems to me that you’ve just been making yourself—and by extension me—miserable with it.” 

“Maybe you don’t know me. That’s how I have fun,” he laughs and doesn’t bother looking at the girls along the bar. There’s no point. He has to mourn a relationship that never could have happened. “Huge fan of pain.”

“Give yourself a break, look at some beautiful women. Stop beating yourself up over all you didn’t do,” Eret leans closer and shrugs in a muted gesture towards the group of supposedly not-crazy girls. Hiccup glances over. 

“Oh my God, she’s here,” He hisses, hiding his face towards the back of the bar and wondering immediately if he should just leave. Eret anchors him with a hand on his shoulder.

“Which one.”

“Blonde—”

“Eugh, her? It can’t be her, mate.”

“What?” Hiccup looks again to see if there’s something wrong with her. Nope, still perfect.

“The blonde one in the purple dress? The psycho? She was harassing us—mostly me--at the bar a couple of weeks ago?” Eret looks at him like he’s had a stroke or something and Hiccup looks again. The girl from the bar is there, but he can’t look at her without getting sidetracked.

“No, black dress.” Skin tight black dress that barely goes halfway down pale, bare thighs. He has touched that ass, and his memory just doesn’t do it justice. He wants to grab it properly. He should be ashamed of himself.

“Ah, I can tell you that she has an incredibly scary friend, and she’s drinking fireball shots quickly.” Eret leans a little closer, “And I haven’t the slightest idea where her sacrum is, but she has one of the best asses I’ve ever seen.”

Hiccup glares at him and stands up next to the bar, because he really is reprehensible and he really should leave. “Go talk to her.”

“I can’t. She’s—she’s out with her friends and her doctor, namely me, just dumped her via voicemal—look at her. She’s perfect, already over it.”

“I bet if you told her that it would work out in your favor.”

“Again, I’m her doctor.”

“Not anymore…Plus, women love doctors.” Eret shakes his head. “Or you can sit there staring all night until she leaves.”

“I’m—I’m going to finish my drink and then leave.” He leans against the counter and watches her, laughing and tossing back a shot. She still seems stable, but looser, happier. He wants to get closer, it’s magnetic, like an open plane door and a crisp new boarding pass.

He should leave. It’s time for him to leave. 

She’s celebrating, she must have won. Her back is fine and she’s fine and for some reason he was meant to have this long last glimpse of the impossible. He saw her, and now he should go. 

The girl in purple says something and Astrid looks over her shoulder at him, making brief, scalding eye contact.

He should leave. He should leave now.

His feet don’t respond like he wants them to. 

Her shoulders ripple as she pounds back another shot, turning around with a beatific smile and stepping towards him.

00000

“Astrid, that guy I thought was gay is looking at you,” Ruffnut bumps her friend’s arm and peers over her shoulder. Astrid shrugs, uninterested. “No, he’s cute, almost as cute as the bartender. You should look.”

“I’m—” in love with my chiropractor? That’s still a hyperbole she’s not ready to get shit for and she shakes her head. She’s supposed to be getting over that, helping her friend. “I’m here to have fun with my team, not run off with some guy.”

“You won’t even look? Window shopping is always free.”

“Ruffnut,” Astrid smacks her friend’s arm and laughs before sneaking a look over her shoulder. There’s Dr. Haddock, leaning against the bar and staring at her. “Oh my god—”

“He’s hot, right?”

“That’s Dr. Haddock.” 

“I knew it!” Ruffnut hoots, pumping at the air, and Astrid takes the opportunity to take another shot from the team tray on the bar behind them. Fireball. Not her favorite, and it burns into her nose. “I knew Dr. Haddock must be a real hottie from the way you kept ditching me!”

“Keep it down,” Astrid grabs her friend’s wrist as if she can drag the girl a few inches shorter, less noticeable.

“You like him,” she whispers, laughing. “I’ve never seen you act this way about a guy. Come on, you’re Astrid Hofferson, you kiss who you want, when you want—”

“That’s the whole problem. I did kiss him,” Astrid mutters before pounding back another shot. That’s what? Six? Seven? She’s not quite sure, and she’s still nervous. “I was sitting on the table and he was right there talking about my lumbar spine and I just did it.”

“You’re weirder than I thought, Hofferson, getting turned on by lumbar spines.”

“You should hear him say it. Lumbar Spine,” she trills in a slightly deeper voice and Ruffnut laughs.

“Seriously, go get him. He’s still looking—Op, yup, he’s looking at your ass.”

“He is not, he’s not that kind of guy,” Astrid rolls her eyes, but her drunken hips have a slightly different idea, shifting to one side. Ruffnut hoots.

“Yeah, he’s looking. He likes it too,” she leans around Astrid. “Mmm, if you don’t go talk to him, I’m going to. Maybe that bartender gets jealous.”

“If I do go talk to him, I—” She glances back over her shoulder again and takes another shot, just for good measure. Those are going to all hit at the same time, aren’t they? “I’m going to break some HIPAA law or something.”

“Some what law?”

“Some patient-doctor confidentiality law, or something.” She spares him another glance and their eyes meet. Dr. Haddock looks away, shy and delicious, and she stomps an angry foot. “Dammit, he saw me.”

“You have to go over there now,” Ruff shoves at her shoulder. “You checked each other out, you have to. And you’re drunk enough to blame it on the alcohol, no excuses.”

“Fine!” Astrid throws her hands up to avoid another shove and turns around, strutting as confidently as she can towards the still shy man. He’s staring at the floor and she almost runs into him, so determined to win that green gaze back. 

“Fancy meeting you here, Dr. Haddock.,”

It’s awkward, but he looks up, red-faced and looking oddly guilty. She almost blurts that he can stare at her ass all he wants.

He could cop a feel if he wanted to, that would be absolutely fantastic.

“Ms. Hofferson,” he’s too formal, and it’s even more adorable through her drink-fogged mind. He has a scar on his chin that she suddenly wants to bite, and it’s hard not to, what with how even she is with him in her heels. “I didn’t realize this was a college bar, I should probably find a new spot.”

“No, it’s the only bar around here that’s not a college bar, that’s why we’re here,” she laughs, subliminally using the loud noise around them as an excuse to move forward. “We just won regionals, we wanted to celebrate without frat douches sticking their heads in.”

“Congratulations!” He’s a little too loud, even as she leans forward further, elbow resting along the bar. “And I’ll keep my frat douche head out of your celebration.” She punches his arm and lets her fingers linger there a second too long.

“Can I buy you a drink? It is your win too, we never could have done it with my back out of line.”

“Oh no, I can’t let you do that—”

“Come on, just one? What are you drinking?” She waves the bartender over before he can say anything else, her arm brushing against his shoulder.

“Really, Ms. Hofferso—”

“Call me Astrid, and if you don’t say anything, I’m getting you a Jack and Coke.”

“No,” he shakes his head and stands up, leaning away from her and staring down at the ground for a moment. 

“What?” 

“No, you can’t buy me a drink.” His face screws up slightly as he looks away, back at the bar, shoulders hunched forward like he’s protecting himself. “I tried—No, Ms. Hofferson. You need to go back to your friends.” 

“I thought we were sort of friends.” She cocks her head and edges towards him and he glares at her, face impossibly stony. 

“Because you don’t seem to be getting it, I’m turning you down. I don’t want to talk to you,” he stares at the bar like she’s already gone, sitting down one stool over like she was never even here. “Go back to your friends.” 

Astrid stands there for a second, uncomprehending. He doesn’t look at her, and it starts to feel less and less like she’s about to run away and more like he never actually noticed her. She turns and walks back to Ruff who’s genuinely confused enough to be ignoring the bartender, who’s also looking. 

Astrid’s face heats up as she grabs another shot off of the tray and pounds it back, shrugging Ruff’s insistent question off with a glare and scanning the room. It feels like everyone is staring, but no one really is, her embarrassment is thankfully private aside from a pair of muddled brown eyes down the bar. She elbows Ruff and gestures towards the indiscriminate guy staring at her, boring and stocky. 

“What do you think?”

“What about Dr. Hottie?” Ruffnut is staring at him and Astrid pinches her arm and points at the other, nameless guy, grinning at him. 

“I struck out. What do you think of that guy?” 

“Dr.—”

“Shut up. I’m going for it.” 

“Astrid—” And it’s Ruffnut’s rarely used gentle voice. 

“Don’t. I’ll be home in the morning. Have fun with the rest of your shots.” 

And the guy doesn’t turn her down. He lets her buy him a drink and he grabs her waist and invites her back to his apartment. She feels shockingly sober when she goes with him. 

00000

Undergrad Athletes,

I know better than anyone that athletics can hurt, and that we often find ourselves complaining about hips and knees and backs right along with our much older relatives. But I have a suggestion, I would have brushed it off a month ago too, so just hear me out. 

Have any of you ever tried a chiropractor? I expected it to be quack medicine, but we’re lucky enough to have a really great doctor in our town community. Actually, he’s too good, my back is so great now that I’m not going back, so I thought I’d try and drum up some business. 

Dr. Haddock  
100 Mulberry Rd.  
haddockchiropractic.com

Lacrosse team captain,  
Astrid Hofferson

She hits send after double checking that she’s selected the entire undergrad mailing list. It feels like the right thing to do, no matter how strange she still feels about their extra-office encounter that weekend. Whatever she should call it. 

But no matter how much he confuses her as a man, he’s a good doctor and well…she doesn’t want to run him out of town. He deserves the business. 

Her phone buzzes on the bed beside her and she picks it up, grimacing at the new text. It’s from an unsaved number, local area code, and she wishes it would just disappear. That guy from last night—Dave? Dan? Something like that—won’t stop trying to ask her out or something. She doesn’t know. 

She didn’t even give him her number, he pulled it off of her phone after she fell asleep. Unfortunately, that was the guy’s most memorable move. 

She deletes the text without looking at it, already dreading another one, shifting against her stacked pillows and drumming her fingers on the back of her laptop screen. 

What is she going to do if she sees Dr. Haddock again? Why does she still care?

The obvious decision is to try again. Her method hasn’t failed yet, and it must be a fluke or she was too drunk and…he acted like he was interested, didn’t he? He kissed her back. The only things saying he’s not interested are his words. 

It stings worse than it should that he had to shoo her, like a naughty dog. It’s worse than a simple no, but she still doesn’t know why she’s hung up on it. He’s just someone hot, right? That’s Ruffnut’s opinion on everything anyway. 

And that’s a solid way to think about it. She tried, she cleansed her palette, hooked up with someone else, but she doesn’t feel any better. She came out on the other side of it with Dr. Haddock still nestled in her brain like an infestation. 

The worst part is that she knows it’s wrong, he was her doctor and that’s…bad, obviously. But it doesn’t feel wrong. It’s cumbersome and confusing and oddly painful, but not wrong. She gets that kissing him in his office was wrong and will admit that approaching him when she was inebriated wasn’t the best choice, but Dr. Haddock and her, as a concept, as a unit…it feels alright. Better than alright. 

Warm and foreign and distracting. 

And what she’s learned through this whole ordeal, more than anything else, is that Dr. Haddock is a good man. Better than Dave or Dan or whoever, he wouldn’t even entertain the idea of taking advantage of her. It unfortunately kept her from taking advantage of him but had the side effect of wedging him in her head, labelled as impossibly special and different. 

She’s never been interested in special before. 

She sighs and checks the time, hedging her bets that Fishlegs will still be awake. She knows that he has mid-terms at some point this month and decides it’s not too horrible to interrupt his studying. It’s time to break out the big guns. 

He picks up on the second ring with a chirping hello and she’s relaxing already, staring at a blank search page on her laptop. If anyone can help her reason through this, it’s Fishlegs Ingermann himself. 

“Hey Fish.”

“You’re up later than normal,” he assesses, and it would be strange if it were anyone but Fishlegs telling her about her sleep schedule. “You should really be sleeping an extra hour the week after a big game to facilitate muscle repair.” 

“Thanks dad, but I’m fine. Midterms this week?”

“Starting Wednesday,” he doesn’t sound nervous at all and she almost asks him how many times he’s read this semester’s text books already. “What’s wrong? You’re usually thirty seconds into your victory speech this far into a post-game congratulatory phone call. Congratulations, by the way.” 

“Did you watch the game?”

“Of course,” he chuckles and it sounds like home. “What’s wrong?”

“Can you help me figure something out?” She can hear him rummaging for a pencil on the other end. “It’s not math homework or anything, it’s…I might have a man problem.”

“How many brothers do I need to bring with me?” His rummaging goes silent. “Big enough that you didn’t take him out yourself, so I’ll probably need at least Steven and Ralph—”

“I’m not hiring you as a henchman, Fish.”

“Of course not. I wouldn’t accept your money.”

She laughs and bites her lip, trying to figure out how to explain this. If there’s anyone more in love with the rule book than her, it’s her best friend, and she can almost feel a cloud of judgment hanging on the horizon. 

“I’m having a problem with a man that I like.” 

“Have you performed the Hofferson maneuver?” He’s absolutely clinical and she laughs. 

“Isn’t that where I put you in a headlock and steal your glasses? Because no, I haven’t tried that.”

“That’s the Hoffersonian. The Hofferson maneuver is when you walk up and kiss a guy without prelude. It was one hundred percent effective in high school.”

“It worked twice.” 

“You only tried it twice, it was always successful.”

“Well, my streak is over, I guess, because the Hofferson maneuver didn’t work…and it’s a bit more complicated than that. That’s what I need to talk to you about.” 

“I’m probably not the best source of relationship advice, Astrid, you know that.” 

“But you’re my facts and figures guy and it’s an ethical question and my roommate makes me look like a softy. Just talk me through this.” She sighs and he’s silent for a worryingly long time.

“An ethical issue? Should I be worried?” 

“No.” 

“Because the percentage of college aged women who take an inappropriate interest in their college professor is—”

“It’s not my professor,” she scowls at the wall. “Do you really trust me that little?”

“I just know that your parents are worried, and I guess that’s rubbing off.” 

“They don’t need to be worried,” she snarls. “I’ve got a 4.0 gpa and my team is winning—”

“No one is denying that you’re amazing, Astrid. I just said that your parents are worried.” 

She wonders if she should even tell him. She did call him up and announce a man problem, he won’t let her shove it under the rug now. 

“From a strictly ethical standpoint, is my chiropractor worse than a professor?” 

He’s silent again and her ears burn. “But he’s not my chiropractor anymore, he’s…I executed the Hofferson maneuver,” she uses his term for it rather than delve back into the gory details, “and he dropped me as a patient immediately.” 

“Are you ok? Really?”

She snorts at the question. And her parents wonder why she spent the last two summers at school working in alternate internships. They get involved and it’s all worry, and no one listens to her. 

“I’m fine. It’s not—he’s just a good guy, Fish. He’d be a good guy if I met him anywhere else, it’s just…bad luck.” 

“Why did you need a chiropractor, anyway?”

“Got tackled at a scrimmage,” she shrugs it off and he makes a quiet noise of dismissal, like he buys her story. “But…it’s not some messed up thing. He’s smart and funny and…nice.” 

“You used to think Doug was funny,” he warns and she almost hangs up. 

“Doug was never a good guy. And when are you going to accept that everything I do can’t be traced back to Doug? I haven’t even thought about Doug since the last time you brought him up.” 

“Ok…Let’s…let’s figure this out, then. I’m looking and it doesn’t necessarily say that chiropractors have to be members of the American Medical Association, but it’s a good place to start…” he mutters to himself and she types to catch up, sifting through a plain government website. “And code of ethics…and the patient-physician relationship.”

“How are you finding this so fast?” 

“Right side of the screen,” he helps her, and she knows his flat tone means he’s already reading. This is the kind of help she wanted, with Fishlegs on the case there’s going to be some sort of black and white, right and wrong line and all of this won’t be so damn confusing anymore. 

If it’s wrong, she thinks she can let it go. That’s stupid, and it doesn’t feel wrong, but it might be. She’d be able to take black and white on a government website at face value. Some things are just impossible, and she’d be stupid not to acknowledge that. 

“Finding anything?” 

“Reading,” he deflects the question and she can hear the quiet static of his lips moving along with the words as he reads them. “Ok, I think I found something, but I don’t know if it helps you.” 

“Where?” 

He directs her to the paragraph and she reads it twice to be sure. She smiles. 

00000


	7. Clash

00000

Chapter 7: Clash

00000

Hiccup has been fully booked since eight in the morning with an absolute legion of out of whack athletes. There was the football player with the crick in his third cervical vertebrae and the soccer player with the jacked up shoulder. He spent his lunch hour with a baseball player and his coach, talking about elbows and tendonitis prevention, and by three o’clock he’s exhausted and glancing at the clock on the wall like a kid impatient to leave school. 

His last appointment for the day slumps into the room and sits on the edge of the table, long blonde dreads draped over his shoulders. He looks familiar somehow, like someone Hiccup has seen in the supermarket a dozen times, someone who goes to the same gym occasionally. Well, some guy who was in the gym that one time Hiccup went in and signed up, even though he knew he’d never follow up. 

“Hello…” Hiccup holds out his hand and the boy shakes it, handing him a familiar form. 

“Oh, Ted. Ted Thorston,” he leans back on his hands, “and as it says on the paper thingy, my back is very much hurt.” 

“Ok then…” Hiccup skims the form and cracks a smile. “Ah, slack liking accident, ground or tree?” He walks behind the boy’s back and tries to square his shoulders, noting the angle sloping across them. 

“Tree, this time. I just sort of jumped into it to be honest—ooh!” He yelps as Hiccup grabs his shoulder and pushes between his shoulder blades with a flat hand, coaxing a pop out of the third thoracic vertebra. “That…do it again.” 

“Just a second,” Hiccup laughs, “can you straddle the table? It looks like a lumbar problem.” 

“Are you that kind of doctor?” He raises an eyebrow and Hiccup flushes at the insinuation, bruised pride still too close to the surface. 

“No…I’m just—I’m going to look at your lower back, it looks a bit out of line.” Hiccup tries to keep up his professionally calm expression, ordering the kid to cross his arms in front of him and reaching around to grab his elbows. 

“This is sort of weird, doc.” 

Hiccup ignores it and twists to the left, and the patient’s back releases with a gunshot pop. “That’s not weird at all. Again.” 

“Ok, other arm on top…and to the right,” Hiccup mutters to himself and the kid groans too loud when his back pops again. Kathy snickers out in the hallway and Hiccup glares at the door. “This whole day has been weird, to be honest. I’ve never been this busy.” 

“Duh, didn’t you know? Someone sent a mass referral e-mail out to athletes over at State last night. Can you pop me again? Please?” The kid pauses and looks around at Hiccup. “Now.”

“Who sent the e-mail?”

“Pop me and I’ll tell you.” 

“Tell me and I’ll pop your neck,” Hiccup argues, calm dread pooling in his stomach. 

“Astrid Hofferson, the lacrosse captain. She has the mega-list of athletes and…is that enough intel? I need payment before my next assignment.”

“Astrid Hofferson sent out a mass referral e-mail about me?” Hiccup waits for the punch line, and the kid just looks at him eagerly. 

“That’s what I said. You said something about popping my neck?”

00000

Astrid takes a sip of her drink, strongly mixed even though the bartender is dealing with Ruffnut. She wonders if there’s a sympathy shot in there somewhere, because she has to deal with Ruffnut too, all the time. And of course, the one time she expresses a strong preference about what bar they shouldn’t go to, they ended up here anyway. 

She’s in the market for a new best friend and roommate. 

And she really doesn’t want to say anything, but her unusual silence is making everything a little too clear. The bartender isn’t into Ruff’s extreme version of forward, and honestly, he seems to be looking over at Astrid a little too pensively. She should just go. Ruff can get a cab later, or something. She borrows her roommate’s car all the time to go to the store or class when she’s running late, the other girl wouldn’t mind her borrowing it to go home and mope, would she? 

Of course she’d mind, but the following fight would be a welcome break from the last week’s monotony. 

Every day, get up, go to class, go to practice, do homework, sleep. The same places, the same drills, running around the same field in seemingly pointless plays that are already perfect. Something is missing and she’s not stupid enough to be confused about it. 

Her back is wonderful. Absolutely fine. And that should be a good thing, since her chiropractor dropped her with a list of references she didn’t bother to save. She doesn’t want anyone else jacking around with her spine anyway. There was trust there, along with whatever made her kiss him, and she’s more hurt than she should be about it. 

It was stupid to kiss him like that. Stupid and naïve and…she’s best when she’s not impulsive. That’s something obvious that always rings true, why did she have to go be an impulsive child right when she actually wanted something? 

Ruffnut announces that she’s going to the bathroom and Astrid nods, draining her drink in a quick gulp and accepting with a nod when the bartender sets another in front of her. The plans of stealing Ruff’s car and going home fly out the window, but they weren’t really solid anyway. 

“You look like you’ve had a rough week,” he stops in front of her and leans on the bar. She looks up and shrugs. “Then again, I guess all of your weeks are long weeks,” he glances towards the bathroom, “living with that one.” 

“She’s not so bad if you’re not her…target,” Astrid laughs and stirs her drink before taking a sip. “You’re pouring generously today.” 

“You look like you need it.” He stands like he’s going to leave before deciding against it, looking towards the bathroom door one last time. 

“Don’t worry, she’s probably primping. Because another coat of lip gloss is going to change your mind about her entirely.” 

“You’re Astrid Hofferson, aren’t you?” He asks and she frowns, watching him take her empty glass away. 

“I’ve never been infamous before. I’m assuming Dr. Haddock and you…”

“He’s a regular. We chat.” 

“And you chatted about me?” It’s not really a question, his face and falsely innocent shrug answer for her. “Of course. He probably thinks I’m an idiot.” 

“That’s the last thing he thinks about you.” 

“I was going to stay away because running into him after last week would be hard. For him. But I was dragged here.” 

“Hard for him, huh? That’s awfully considerate of you.” He looks at her out of the corner of his eye and she looks down the bar at the other half dozen people nursing drinks. Doesn’t one of them need something? 

“Hey, I’m not some…scorned woman or anything. It’s an ethical thing, I get it.” She stares at her hands and grumbles, “I’m not a fan, but I get it.” 

“Didn’t he refer you to another doctor?” He asks, “because from my understanding, that means you’re not his patient anymore.” 

“It doesn’t matter,” she shakes her head. “He turned me down anyway, you know?” 

“Because you were his patient.” 

“Yeah, I’m not going to make a fool out of myself for your amusement. With any luck, I won’t even be in here again and he can just have his stomping grounds.” Astrid glances sidelong at the bathroom and leans forward slightly. “What are the chances you’re going to be able to shirk her any time soon?”

“You are a horrible wingman.” 

“Maybe I’m just flipping sides.” 

“I don’t think you should give up on the doctor just yet. Maybe get to know him outside of the office, your friend is a unique brand of crazy I haven’t ever seen before and I might be too fascinated to get rid of her.” He smiles, and for a second Astrid can see why Ruffnut is so interested. 

“You’re just as crazy as she is.” 

“Some of us hide it better,” he winks at her and nods a goodbye, walking to greet a couple of new customers. 

Astrid gets up and walks to the bathroom to check on Ruff, who’s predictably in front of the mirror, swearing at her reflection in a bruising pep talk. “…you just need to walk in there and be louder and—”

“Normally those have more swearing.” Astrid walks up beside her friend, looking into the mirror and frowning. Rejection and giving up don’t look good on her and she makes herself stand up straighter. It just reminds her of Dr. Haddock and her perfect posture. She slumps forward and tinkers with the edge of her braid, fixing the band holding it in place.

“I think this is a delicate measure,” Ruff frowns at her reflection and looks over at Astrid. “Do you have any lip gloss? I forgot.” 

“No, I didn’t bring a purse.” 

“I’ll be out in a minute. I need my zen space. And a best friend who remembers lip gloss.” 

“Go get ‘em, Tiger.” Astrid rolls her eyes and walks to the door. 

00000

Hiccup walks into the bar, more determined than normal to get to his beer and then his bed, and he nearly falls when someone pulls him aside in the entryway. It’s Eret, holding a rag in one hand for cleaning off a table and Hiccup narrows his eyes. 

“What do you want?” 

“She’s here, man. She’s here and she’s trying to give up on you.”

“She’s here?” Hiccup doesn’t need to ask who Eret is talking about, and that fact in and of itself is embarrassing. “I don’t care. All the doctor charm has probably worn off by now, I don’t have to worry about it.” 

“You’re an idiot.” 

“Thanks for summing that up. Well said, I’ll take my business to the liquor store. Where there’s not a moral minefield.” He turns to leave and Eret gives him a surprisingly stern look. “What are you, my father?” 

“You’re a lucky man if your father tries this hard to get you laid—wait, that came out wrong.” 

“That did.”

“She doesn’t want to be here. She’s here with her crazy friend, reluctant wingman.” Eret tries to sound optimistic and Hiccup falters towards the door. “Hey, she said she’s planning to give you the bar. Her friend dragged her here.” 

“So she’s here and she doesn’t want to be, I don’t know where you’re going with this.” 

“I know she went home with some other guy the other night—”

“Salt in the wound.”

“But,” Eret speaks a little louder, drowning out any impending snark. “But she’s here and she’s talking about you, and she’s trying to give up. If she were just trying to hook up, she’d be happy after the other night. But she’s still on about you, do you know what that means?” 

“That you’re a horrible story-teller.” 

“That she likes you. She likes you, and don’t try to say that you don’t like her, after all the drivel you made me listen to—Hey, she likes you.” 

“You’re selling a yacht to a homeless guy, it’s not going to happen. I should really go home.” 

“You won’t go sit down and talk to the girl? Really?” Eret ribs him and Hiccup rolls his eyes. “Do you think she’s here mourning some other doctor.” 

“I’m not dead.” 

“Well, if you don’t man up, you’re going to be dead to her. She’s not going to wait around forever—”

“Good, I hope she moves on,” Hiccup shakes his head. “I hope that she figures herself out and…appreciates herself instead of giving it away.” 

“You have to try. Come on, you have to try, you should hear yourself.” 

“I’m not deaf. I’m just a sappy idiot and I’m going to go sit down, ignore her and have a drink.” Hiccup points towards the bar, “unless you’re not going to serve me. Because I won’t be your entertainment.” 

“Astrid said the same thing.” 

00000

Dr. Haddock sees her and he stops short in front of the same stool he’d been at the last weekend. Regular customer, regular stool, and here she is butting in. His eyes try to bulge out of his head and she sighs, biting her lip and standing. 

“Hey,” she inches towards him, nervous like he’s going to turn and leave. He gives her an awkward nod and stares at the stool. “You can sit down, I’m not going to bite.” 

“I didn’t expect to see you here.” 

“I—the last thing I want to do is take over your space,” she flirts with the idea of sitting down beside him before changing her mind and leaning against the bar. “I just wanted to apologize for…being so inappropriate the other day in your office. And here, how I acted here didn’t help anything.” 

“Oh,” he’s taken aback, but to her relief he relaxes slightly, leaning his elbows on the bar. “That…apology accepted.” 

“Alright then,” she smiles brighter than she feels. It hurts to look at him somehow, like staring a mistake in the face but worse, more muddled and generally uncomfortable. “I’m glad I had a chance to say that.” She turns to walk back to her drink, stopping when he starts talking again behind her. 

“Thank you for the referrals by the way, the office has been crazy all week.” He’s smiling when she turns back to him and her chest feels a little tighter. 

“How did you figure out that was me?” 

“I asked,” he shrugs and turns slightly towards her, knees angled away from the bar. “Was it supposed to be a secret?” 

“No, I just—I didn’t do that for your attention or anything. You’re a good doctor, you deserve the business.” 

“Thank you. You didn’t have to do that.” He looks around for the bartender, who’s suspiciously lingering at the end of the bar. “I should apologize for how I handled that whole…you kissing me thing too.” He rubs the back of his neck with a nervous hand and her heart beats a little too hard in her chest. “For one, I shouldn’t have kissed you back, and I should have referred you in person. Or at least left my own voicemail, that wasn’t…I’m sorry about that.” 

She wants to call him out on admitting that he kissed her back. She wants to kiss him again just to see, just to check if it’d be as good and he’d respond in the same way. 

“Look, I rode here with my friend and she’s…she’s about to come back from the bathroom and be insane and—if it’s not an ethical issue, I’m going to come and sit by you.” 

00000


	8. Chatter

00000

Chapter 8: Chatter

00000

“I’m going to come and sit by you.” 

He stares at her for a second before shrugging, as if he can look non-committal with those huge green eyes boring into her soul. He looks terrified. “I don’t have to—”

“No, that’s—yeah, go ahead. I probably won’t be here very long, I warn you. I was just stopping in for a nightcap.” 

“It’s seven thirty,” she looks at the clock on the wall and he shrugs. 

“Long week.” 

“Another one?” She glances back towards her drink for a moment before stepping over and grabbing it, dragging it as casually as she can down the bar and sitting down beside him. “Tell me about it.” 

He looks for the bartender again. The man glances over his shoulder and almost winks at Astrid before walking to stand in front of them. 

“The regular for you? And do you want another Astrid?” 

“Sure—”

“I’ll take another—”

They talk at the same time and Astrid laughs nervously, draining the dregs of the drink in front of her and turning back to him. “So…about that week.” 

“Right, my week,” he accepts the beer that the bartender puts down and she watches his Adam’s apple bob when he takes a sip. He hasn’t shaved in a couple of days and it suits him, the rough red stubble making him slightly less pretty. “It was exceptionally busy, thanks to you. And while that’s a good thing, my fingers are sore,” he holds his hand out in front of him demonstratively and clenches his fist. “And…that sound really pathetic when I say it out loud.” He seems to weigh the silence for a moment, glancing towards her. “How was your week?” 

“Not the best. I feel better now that I got to apologize,” she accepts her third drink from the bartender and takes a deep sip. 

“You didn’t have to get hung up over it like that, it happens.” 

“What happens? Your patients kissing you and then drunkenly trying to pick you up in bars?” 

“Well, I mean, look at me,” he holds his arms out wide and since he asked so nicely, her eyes drift across the width of his chest. “Of course it happens all the time.” 

“I bet.” 

“It was a joke,” he laughs nervously and it’s cuter than it should be. She pushes the drink tentatively away from her, because getting drunk just means a repeat of last weekend, and she’s not sure that her pride can take it. 

“You’re being nice. I made a fool out of myself,” she tugs at the end of her braid hanging over her shoulder, suddenly feeling conspicuous. Despite Ruff’s prodding, she only really made a half-assed effort at looking presentable and the bar is starting to fill with people far more ready. Maybe it’s a good thing though, maybe she’s non-threatening and this conversation could go somewhere. 

It’s stupid, but she was starting to miss Dr. Haddock and their goofy, stilted conversations. 

“I wouldn’t say that,” he smiles sadly into his drink. “Trust me, if that could have worked, it would have.” 

“What do you mean if it could have worked?” She turns to face him, bare knee bumping up against the side of his thigh. He looks down and she adjusts her skirt, tugging the black fabric down as far as it will go. 

“I mean if it could have worked, it would have worked.” 

“Repeating it isn’t helping anything.” 

“I’m just saying that it was…flattering. I was flattered, and that’s it.” He takes another drink of his beer and sets it down on the bar a little too loud. “Because you’re my patient, and I know things about you that I wouldn’t know if you hadn’t ever been my patient. I shouldn’t even know you at all, outside of my office, and…it’s amoral, using any of that now.” 

“Oh come on, what do you really know about me, honestly?” She turns towards him, a little too satisfied when his eyes narrow, competitive. 

“Your name is Astrid Hofferson, you’re twenty-two, you play lacrosse at State and…” he runs out of steam and she gives him a smug smile. 

“And I don’t think that my sensitive sacroiliac joint really counts as a fact here.” She starts numbering on her fingers, “You’re from Berk, you’re twenty seven, your father is a family doctor, you like helping kids, you have a cat—”

“What’s my name?” 

“Doctor,” she flushes and crosses her arms, daring him to correct her. 

“Nope, not even close,” he takes another sip of his beer, and at some point another appeared beside it. She didn’t even notice. 

“I still knew more than you did. Where am I from? What do my parents do? It’s not like you’re my family doctor who asks me about boyfriends and school every time I go in.” She can’t help but think that her point went wrong somewhere along the way when he frowns into his beer. “What?” 

“It’s still wrong,” he shakes his head. “It’s—”

“Does anything say that we can’t be friends?” The American Medical Association’s code of ethics says absolutely nothing about being friends. 

“Nothing says that, but—”

“But what? Can’t we sit here and have a drink together?”

“We already are,” he pushes an empty glass away and pulls the fresh one towards him. She takes a sip through her straw, gulping deeply as the tipsiness starts to set in far enough that she can’t taste the alcohol anymore. “And I guess nothing in the extremely big book of morals says that we can’t.” 

“And you already turned me down as a patient—”

“That was the right thing to do.” 

“I didn’t say that it wasn’t…” she looks around and Ruff is back from the bathroom, looking at her curiously instead of at the bartender. Astrid looks away like she didn’t notice and rests her elbow on the bar, drumming her fingers on the edge of the wood. “What are you drinking?” 

“It’s an IPA,” he shrugs and she edges her arm down the counter slightly. 

“Can I try a sip?” 

“Sure,” he pushes the glass towards her and she picks it up, making a show of sipping from the opposite side that he has been. 

“Ooh, that’s good. I’ll have to remember that,” a look over her shoulder proves that Ruffnut is back on the scent and she sighs. “It looks like I might be in here quite a bit.” 

“Eret isn’t her biggest fan,” he gestures to the bartender and Astrid swallows a laugh at the man’s slightly nervous expression when Ruff holds a twenty out in front of her. He’s proud enough not to take the tip and the blonde sits back, miffed and rooting through her purse for another technique. “How do you know her?” 

“Oh, a personal question, you’re just trying to get rid of me.” 

“No I—You’re probably right—”

“No, I’m kidding,” she almost reaches over and sets her hand on his arm but stops herself at the last second, letting her hand fall uselessly onto her knee. “She’s my roommate. And teammate, but roommate is more relevant.” 

“I notice you didn’t say friend.” 

Astrid glances over her shoulder at Ruff adjusting her boobs like it’ll magically help the situation and laughs. 

“She’s one of my best friends, I just don’t admit it when she’s acting like this.”

“Ah, you don’t want to be taken captive by her lynch mob?” 

“She is the lynch mob.” He laughs and Astrid drains her drink, trying not to enjoy it. But no matter how deaf she pretends to be, she can’t help but notice that he has a really nice laugh, a little twangy, a little nasal, but still comforting somehow. She wants to hear it again. “She said she met you in here a couple of weeks ago.” 

“She did, it was…an experience.” 

“That’s Ruff for you,” Astrid laughs and quickly thanks Eret, who set down another drink without even asking this time. It’s probably not a good idea, she should probably stop or slow down, but he doesn’t seem to be. He takes a gulp out of his beer and she can’t help but notice that his lips are planted over the smear left behind by her chapstick. Coincidence, no doubt. “I heard that she thought you were gay.” 

“And after her man. It was like being dropped onto the set of Maury,” he turns towards her slightly, knee brushing against hers. She takes another sip of her drink. “Aren’t you going a little fast there?” 

“You have no idea, I haven’t even gotten into the exciting part of my night yet. If I have any intuition at all, I’m going to be doing a body shot off of Ruff within an hour and I want to be good and drunk for that.” 

“I don’t think this is that kind of bar.”

“She borrowed my favorite jacket, if she pours liquor in her belly button, I’m drinking it before she can get it all over everything,” nothing about the statement rings an alarm bell in Astrid’s head that she’s had enough and she takes another drink. Dr. Haddock raises his glass towards her and she clinks hers against his. 

“To priorities.” 

“To priorities,” they both drink and she sets her glass back down on the bar, tapping it along the wood grain. “What is your name, anyway?” 

“Ah, if I told you that, I’d have to kill you.” He smirks, obviously impressed with his own joke and her fist flies out before she really thinks about it, knocking too gently across his bicep. 

“That bad, huh?” 

“It’s pretty bad.”

“If you don’t tell me, I’m pretty much forced to call you Dr. Haddock.” 

He blanches at that, looking around like someone will see, like a kid jumping over a ‘keep off the grass’ sign. She sighs and rests her hand against the back of her neck, relishing in the cold leftover from her glass. “I won’t call you that, but I have to call you something.” 

“Hugo,” the corner of his mouth quirks like he tasted something bad. 

“That’s not so bad, it’s French, kind of sexy—” She clears her throat like it’ll make him forget what she just said, pushing the glass away from her and telling herself to slow down. “Why so reserved about Hugo?” 

“It’s not the name, but the nickname,” he wrinkles his nose and she grips her knee hard, trying not to reach out and touch him. “Somewhere along the way, high school I think—It wasn’t the best time for me—Hugo turned into Hiccup and I haven’t quite been able to drop it.” 

“Maybe you should stop telling it to people,” she laughs, nudging her knee against his. “Hiccup.” 

“Oh, come on, not you too.”

“I think it’s sort of impressive, pulling off a nickname like Hiccup. Honestly, it’s like a bodybuilder named Tiny or something.” 

“So poetic,” he rolls his eyes. 

“Don’t be such baby,” she turns to face the bar again, shoulder buffeting against his as her balance tries to fail her. Eret is still pouring generously, and she’ll have to thank him next time. “My best friend back home? Everyone calls him Fishlegs because of this disastrous science fair experiment back in the first grade. He was trying to grow these tadpoles in this big tank, and it got broken by the janitors somehow and the morning of the fair the whole gym was covered in these mutant little frog things.” 

Hugo—no, Hiccup—laughs, snorting and shaking his head. “He still hasn’t shaken it. I visited his dorm when we were freshmen and it was pinned to his door. He owns it though, it works.” 

“So it could be worse. I’ll take Hiccup over Fishlegs.” 

“Ruffnut has a twin, guess what everyone calls him? Tuffnut.” 

“Ok, so what’s your embarrassing nickname?” He turns towards her, “you must have one. Your childhood best friend has one, your current best friend has one.” 

“Nope.” She shakes her head and finishes her drink in a moment of weakness where she forgets she’s supposed to be holding herself together. 

“Really? No one calls you…anything?” 

“People call me Astrid, because it’s my name,” she shrugs. 

“That’s lucky.” 

“No, Hiccup, it’s skill.” 

He laughs at that, elbow sliding a little closer to her along the bar. She swallows and glances over at him, eyes tracing the jagged shadow of his eyelashes across his cheek. The light should be horribly unflattering where he’s sitting, but all she can see is patterns of freckles across his cheeks and streaks of red in his hair. 

He said he kissed her back. He said it. “So…what exactly does the big book of morals say about this?” 

His back springs straight and he almost glares at her, a little too disappointed to look truly angry. 

“I have access to your medical files, Astrid. It’s not…right to have other access—”

“Didn’t you get rid of my file when you rejected me as a patient?” She quirks her eyebrow at him and he flushes, running a hand back through his hair. 

“Not yet.” 

“That freaks me out more than doctors kissing patients, the fact that you still have my file even when I’m not your patient anymore.” She’s smiling when she says it, but he looks away, ashamed. 

“I have to keep your file for three years. It’s the law.” 

“You don’t even have my full medical file, you just have a chiropractic file which doesn’t say anything aside from what you’ve learned in the past month. Unless you’re an absolute weirdo and you went through all the red tape to get my full medical history,” she smiles like she knows she has him. “Which you didn’t, because then you’d know more about me.” 

“But what if you didn’t want to kiss me? Or I were coercing you with knowledge that I got from you in a doctor-patient setting?—”

“But I did and you weren’t.” 

He looks over at her again, thinking too hard and she gives him a small smile. He looks away. “Just…hypothetically. If you had a thing—feelings, for a patient, but then they weren’t your patient anymore, and you’d gotten rid of their file, what would be the timeline before you’d consider something more than sitting and having a drink?” 

“Technically,” and the optimistic quirk in his thick brows is almost enough to get her hopes up. “Never.” 

“Never? Isn’t that a little extreme?” She wracks her slightly foggy brain for what she and Fish found the other night. “Because according to the American Medical Association ‘sexual contact that occurs concurrent with the patient-physician relationship constitutes sexual misconduct’,” she recites and finishes smiling, proud she remembered all of that. 

“Exactly. That kiss was sexual misconduct.” He shakes his head.

“But it was my misconduct, I kissed you and you dropped me as a patient. The code of ethics doesn’t say anything about sexual contact that doesn’t occur concurrently with the patient-physician relationship.” 

“I can’t believe you memorized part of the AMA code of ethics. You’re crazy.” He shakes his head and wipes his hands over his face. “And technically, the code of ethics still says that a relationship with a former patient isn’t…desirable. It’s still not a good thing. But it doesn’t matter, I still know things about you that should have taken months to learn, that you should have told me yourself. A patient’s relationship with a doctor is a serious thing, Astrid, it’s not—I can’t—why are we talking about this anyway?” 

“You’re asking why we’re talking about this? I thought that part was pretty obvious.” 

“You’re…what if my code of ethics isn’t necessarily the AMA code of ethics? What if I feel like it’s wrong and—”

“A no would be good enough, Hugo.” It must have been a mistake, she must have misread him. For her to lay it out in front of him like that and have him wave it off and bring up ethics again when she just cited the rule book, she had to have been wrong. He kissed her back on instinct. 

“I think you’re the only person that sounds weirder calling me Hugo than Hiccup.” He continues quietly, spinning his beer glass slowly between his fingers. “That’s the thing, Astrid, I already feel so comfortable with you. It’s messed up, I felt comfortable when you were my patient and it’s even worse now.” 

“Were. Past tense,” she bites her lip when Eret glances over at them. “I’m not your patient anymore, and I think I’m going to get something stronger. Do you want anything? It’s on me.” 

“You don’t have to buy me drinks.” 

“I know. I want to,” she waves Eret over and the man gives her a look, trying to figure out what’s going on. His eyes flick to Hiccup’s empty beer glass and Astrid shrugs. “I’ll take a well whiskey, neat, and I don’t know about him.” 

“Same,” Hiccup says slowly before setting his jaw. “And make mine a double.” 

“Alright, two doubles,” Astrid changes her order and glares at Hiccup. “And put it on my tab, alright?” 

“I’ll be right back with those,” Eret looks at her strangely and she shrugs again, turning back towards Hiccup. 

“Hypothetically, if I hadn’t ever been your patient and I was still lucky—” She clears her throat and lowers her voice, struggling again over the word, “lucky enough to meet you somehow, what would you have done?” 

“Nothing,” he shrugs, staring down at his hand. 

“Again, a no would be enough, you don’t have to drag me through all this patient-doctor nonsense, if you’re saying no, just say no—”

“Like I would have a chance with you.” He cuts her off, pausing with his jaw deliciously flexed as Eret sets down the two drinks. Again, over poured. There are multiple reasons to come to this bar. 

“What is that supposed to mean?” She takes a sip of the whiskey that turns into a gulp. 

“I wouldn’t have any chance with you, look at you, you’re smart and funny and athletic and good looking—”

“How do you know I’m smart? I could be an idiot.” 

“You’re not an idiot,” he repeats, taking a sip of his drink. He doesn’t wince at the burn and it makes her like him more somehow. “So I would do nothing, I wouldn’t embarrass myself.” 

“That’s stupid,” it doesn’t seem to hold much weight and she continues, “especially since I would have done something. Absolutely.” 

“Oh come on—”

“What? Do you think this is some sort of weird patient-doctor thing for me? That I just kiss all my doctors?”

“I’m thinking you have daddy issues.” He says it like an insult but she bursts out laughing, clapping her hand over her mouth when half the bar turns to see what’s so funny. “What? We aren’t exactly peers—”

“What are you talking about? You’re twenty seven, I’d be really concerned if my father was only twenty seven.” 

“You know what I mean.” 

“No, I really don’t.” She shakes her head, “I’m an adult, I thought I was allowed to stop worrying about that when I turned eighteen.” 

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” he scowls and sips at his drink again, setting it down on the bar a little too hard. “I don’t know why we’re even talking about this.” 

“Because you kissed me back,” her voice drops slightly and she leans forward, trying to appear confident while feeling anything but. His eyes dart to her lips and he finishes his drink, sliding it towards the edge of the bar with a meaningful glance towards Eret. 

“I thought we were discounting that. Because it was your sexual misconduct and all.” 

“However you need to think about it,” she rolls her eyes and sips on her drink. “It was a really great kiss though.” 

“I’m not denying that.”

“Good, because you aren’t an idiot either,” she tugs her skirt down again and he looks over at her. “I just—I guess I sort of have a crush on you. Ok?” 

“Are you asking for my permission?” His lip quirks again and she narrows her eyes at him, trying to ignore the blood rushing to her cheeks. “Because I don’t want to stop you but…I’m in a corner—”

“Stop with that. I’m not your patient anymore. And if you said you’d consider something in a week or a month or a year, I’d probably leave you alone—”

“You’re too stubborn for that—”

“And you didn’t read that from my file,” she snaps, fidgeting and pushing her bangs out of her eyes. “You’re not my doctor anymore.” 

“Really? You have excellent posture, who’s your chiropractor, Astrid?” 

“I don’t need one. I have perfect posture naturally.” 

“Denial isn’t good for you,” he puts on that stupid doctor tone and she wants to rip her hair out. 

“I don’t have to listen to you because you’re not my doctor.”

His lip twitches again and she falters, almost leaning in. 

“I saw you leaving with someone else last weekend, after I turned you down.” For a second it looks like he enjoys telling her this, but something pained splits behind his eyes and she feels it deep in her chest like a physical punch. “No matter how great that kiss was, I’m not ready to give up my practice for a crush.” 

“That’s not fair,” she crosses her arms and stares down into her nearly empty glass, buzz fading as her foot starts tapping an antsy rhythm against the rung of the bar stool. 

“I’m not just…a notch in your belt, this is serious for me. I can’t just—”

“I was drunk, my pride was wounded and—”

“I was right, you’re too young for me, anyway.” He cradles his head in his hands and Astrid watches Eret set another double down in front of him. He reaches out and takes a sip. “I’m…set up and stationary and you’re still just a—”

“Just a what? Just a kid? Just a patient?” She shakes her head and drains the rest of her glass, anchored to the seat even though it feels like she should leave. 

“I don’t know.” 

“I only did that because I was…I was drunk and I thought I had a chance. With you.” 

“For what?” He snorts, and he thinks he has her figured out before she even says anything. Honestly, she doesn’t even have herself figured out. 

“More.” 

“Why do you—why…just why?” He turns to look at her, brows knitted close together. Worried, hurt. 

“You’re interesting and kind and funny and handsome, why wouldn’t I?” He stares at her for a second, breathing too hard and blinking slowly. Then he kisses her. 

00000


	9. Bash

00000

Chapter 9: Bash

00000

He doesn’t know why he does it. Maybe it’s because she’s so pretty, complimenting him with an earnest, slightly drunk slur. Maybe it’s to even the score, she got to do this once and so should he. And maybe it’s because he couldn’t stand the thought of not doing it for another second. 

He couldn’t stand the idea of not remembering what her lips feel like because he was too shocked to really register it last time. He couldn’t miss the chance to surprise her, even if he only manages it once. 

She gasps into his mouth and starts kissing him back, lips fast and wanting against his own. Her hand cups the back of his neck and holds him to her and everything tastes like whiskey and the sweet aftertaste of cola. Her knees bump against his as she struggles to get closer, free hand landing against his thigh and anchoring her as she leans forward into him. He grabs her waist, holding her up and against him and away from him all at once. 

This is so very bad. So absolutely impossibly bad. But he doesn’t want to stop, he can’t stop, it’s impossible. Nothing would feel this good if it were something he was supposed to stop. He wants to drag her onto his lap and hold her there, he wants to be closer, all the way closer. 

She pulls away with a wet pop, panting against the side of his face. 

He looks up and Eret is smirking at him from the opposite end of the bar. Astrid’s hand is clamped on his shoulder, so tight his fingers start to tingle. He gently pushes her back onto her stool and lets go, wiping his hands on his jeans and committing the soft, firm warmth of her sides to memory. 

“You might want to let go,” he shrugs under her still clamped tight fingers and she stares at her hand like it doesn’t quite belong to her. “Losing feeling in my arm.” 

“Sorry,” she loosens her grip and her hand lingers against his upper arm for a moment before she pulls it away entirely. “I—what was that for?” 

“I—I drank too much,” he holds his hand to his head and pulls his phone out of his pocket. “I should call a cab, I can’t drive, I—”

“You kissed me.” 

“Hello?” He holds the phone to his ear. “Yeah, I’m at the Ship Tavern, over on fourth and I need a cab. Five minutes? Thanks.” He hangs up and stares at her. “Sorry, I just had to…do that.”

“Five minutes, huh?” 

“Sounds like it. That’s pretty fast for this part of town, I guess they aren’t busy yet. It’s only—I’m sorry, I told myself I wasn’t going to kiss you, I—”

“Don’t apologize.” She shakes her head and reaches out, almost tentatively grabbing his hand. He squeezes back. “We’re just two adults who met in a bar, you introduced yourself and we talked about my crazy roommate, just…that’s what happened.” 

“This isn’t wrong.” 

“No, it’s really not. It’s really, really not.” 

“It’s not,” he shakes his head and she takes a gulp from her glass, hissing under her breath. 

“So. Hypothetically,” she starts, rubbing kiss bruised lips together. “If we were to go back to your place—”

“No, we can’t that’s—”

“Normal,” Astrid cuts him off, stroking her thumb across his knuckle. “It’s so incredibly normal. If you picked me up, I’d go home with you and we’d have some fun and in the morning we’d talk about more and—”

“This isn’t fair,” he’s staring at her lips and she reaches out, nudging his chin until he’s looking at her. 

“I want you.”

“This is stupid.” 

“I like you.” She admits, voice low in the still space between them. “I don’t do that very often, but I like you.” 

“I like you too, but this is still stupid.” 

“You already did the stupid, what are you going to do now?” She tempts him and he groans low in his throat, lighting her entire body on fire as his hand finds her knee and squeezes, experimental. Ruffnut hoots somewhere in the background and she hopes he doesn’t hear, that nothing breaks his trance. He’s looking at her, really looking at her, like she’s been trying to win for weeks, like he’s obviously been trying to prevent. Green eyes tracing the swoop of her neck, the line of her shoulders, the slope of her chest. She gasps.

“Something crazy.” He grabs her glass and drains the rest of her whiskey before tugging her face back into his, hand tenderly cupping her chin as he kisses her more gently, taking his time. She presses her face against him, nudging her nose against his and flicking her tongue against his lips. She’s not good with slow, her hands are grappling at his shoulders, her knees digging into his thigh. “Hey…hey, my mmm,” he tries to interrupt it when his phone buzzes in his pocket but she pulls him back in, nibbling on his bottom lip and weaving her fingers through the back of his hair. “My phone is ringing, my cab is here,” kiss, “I’ve got to go.” 

“Mmm, one more,” she pulls him back in, fingers almost painfully tight in his hair as her tongue tangles with his, an unfamiliar Astrid flavor leaking through the whiskey.

“I’ve got to go…” he pecks her lips and she’s pouting when he pulls away. “I…”

“Am I going with you?” She looks at him, eyes bright and blue and almost fragile. 

“You…If your friend wouldn’t mind, you could share my cab…” Because he has to ask her. There’s something invisibly important in the fact that he’s asking her and she grins. 

“Sure, yeah, she won’t mind.” Astrid nods, too eager, and slides onto her feet off of the stool, stumbling slightly. “Just let me pay,” she fumbles through a small seamless pocket in the side of her skirt and sets a bill on the counter. “Alright, alright,” she laughs, stumbling slightly as she walks towards the door. He wraps his arm around her waist like it’s a habit and she fits too well into the nook of his arm. She stumbles again and he tugs her closer to his side, weaving through the crowd. 

The cab is parked at the curb and Hiccup opens the door of it, holding it open and staring at her as she climbs in. Not in a strange, creepy way, and he notes that it’s the first time he’s looked at her that hasn’t felt wrong and she smiles at him from the other side of the cab. “Are you getting in or am I taking your cab?” 

“Right,” he sits down and shuts the door and her hand lands on his shoulder even as the driver looks into the backseat. “2400 Maple Street.” He tells the driver and she laughs, pressing her lips up against his ear and whispering, words clumsy drunk. 

This is incredibly stupid. So impossibly stupid, and he bites his lip as she kisses his earlobe, nose tickling the line of his jaw. Better than stupid. Crazy. 

The cab starts driving and Astrid’s head finds his shoulder too quickly and he tries not to smile. This is suddenly the best sort of normal, and her words reverberate through his head. They met in a bar, they did, they met today and they started talking about her friends and he never even properly introduced himself until today and it’s fine. 

It’s all so unbelievably fine. 

And she’s going to come back to his place and they’re going to have some fun, like she suggested, and maybe there’s some sort of middle ground that still lets him feel like this. His entire body is too warm and fluttery, and she fits perfectly into his side as she leans against him, hand falling gently on his thigh. She turns her head and kisses the point of his shoulder, and her fingers trace upwards. 

That’s fine, that’s comforting. She’s touching him, and it’s not like he’s being taken home, he’s taking her home. He’s been on the other side of this dozens of times, it’s been a long time, but he’s been in her position, in the back of a cab going to some girl’s house or apartment or…tent. And of course those had different motives, he was thinking of exploration and experience, while now he’s thinking of her. 

It’s worth it for more, isn’t it? And nothing is at stake anyway, she’s right. She’s absolutely right, she’s not his patient anymore, and it’s not like she was a life-long patient, he was only her doctor for a month. Not even really her doctor, her chiropractor, he popped her back he didn’t birth her children or—

Her hand creeps between his thighs and starts tracing the inner seam of his jeans. “What are you doing?” He hisses in her ear and she smiles into his shoulder. 

“More.” 

“Astrid stop,” he tries to hiss, but he’s laughing, too drunk and giddy to pretend to be serious. “Really, don’t—not here.” His tone changes and she grins at him, teeth glinting in the ambient light as the cab drives by a particularly bright street lamp. Her hand slides up an inch, flirting with the bottom of his pants zipper. 

His eyes fall shut and she rests her hands against him, fingers stroking along the slowly forming bulge. His pants can’t believe this is happening, he really can’t believe this is happening, and he laughs even though it’s not funny. She squeezes him and kisses the side of his neck, warm breath tickling the fine hairs behind his ear. “Stop, that tickles—oof!” He grunts when she squeezes again, starting to move her hand in a slow rhythm over his pants. 

“Quiet down, this isn’t exactly private,” she laughs into his ear, nipping at his earlobe. He shivers and reaches down for her hand with the intention of pushing it away. She entwines her fingers with his and her other hand creeps over his lap to continue stroking. And grabbing. 

“Then stop.” 

“I don’t want to. I’ve been thinking about this since I met you,” her lips glance across the shell of his ear and he shivers. 

“You need to get some better fantasies if you’ve been thinking about this.” He’s giggling and his hips buck up into her hand. She shushes him and kisses his ear again, he nuzzles his head into hers, squinting against the light streaming through the window. 

“You’re drunk,” she squeezes again and he bites his lip. “And this isn’t all I’ve been thinking about it.” 

“Oh, really,” he drops his voice and presses his lips to the crest of her forehead and she squirms closer to him.

“Really drunk…”

“Not that drunk, not so drunk that I don’t know what I’m going to do when I get you inside,” he snorts against her bangs. “I’m going to make you some coffee and hold your hair while you puke.” 

“I’m not going to puke,” her hand stills on him and she rests her forehead against his temple. “You sound like you might puke.” 

“M’fine…” The cab stops moving and he jerks his head upright, towards the cabbie who’s avoiding eye contact in an absolutely practiced way. “Right,” he hands his credit card over and signs the receipt with a clumsy hand before turning back to Astrid, nervous again. “So…this is me.” 

“Let’s go inside, if this is your house.”

“Right, inside,” he opens the door and avoids eye contact with the driver, climbing out of the car and stepping up the front walk. His house is small but clean with a two car garage and one bright light bulb on the front port. He pulls out his keys, the same spare ring from a few weeks ago and starts towards the door. 

00000

She’s at his house. She spent that entire car ride feeling him up and her lips still tingle from the soft, barely freckled flesh of his neck and his ass looks absolutely fantastic as he walks up the sidewalk ahead of her. 

He unlocks the door with slightly trembling hands and she rests her hands on his shoulders, sliding them down on either side of spine and gripping at the narrowest point of his trim waist, leaning forward to speak against his back through the thin cotton of his shirt.

“When you did this? I thought I was going to burst out of my skin, I just wanted you to reach down…” she trails one hand down to grab his ass, surprised moan leaking out at the tight muscle in her hand. “Fuck, you have a fantastic ass—”

He pushes the door open and grabs her hand, tripping slightly over the threshold as he drags her inside, shutting the door behind them and pressing her up against it, considerably less shy than he had been in the bar. His hands weave through her hair and he kisses her, swallowing her low moan when his hips nudge against hers, tentative and instinctive. 

Her fingernails dig into the back of his shirt and he moans, dragging her away from the door and stumbling backwards down the hall, big hand finding her ass and grabbing. She trips over his foot and he catches her, nibbling at her lower lip and guiding her blindly backwards. The hard line of a wooden table introduces itself to her lower back and she pulls away with a grin, turning around and bending herself over. 

“Here?” She asks, grinning back over her shoulder and biting her lip when his hand glances across her rear, flirting with the suddenly too long hem of her shirt. 

“No,” he shakes his head and grabs her hips, one hand sliding up to her waist and pulling her upright. “Turn around,” he kisses her neck and spins her to face him, reaching behind her to knock last week’s Sunday newspaper off of the table before pushing her back by her shoulders, until she’s laying back on the table. 

He hooks her hand underneath her legs and his hand dive underneath her skirt, tugging clumsily at the sides of her underwear. Oh, he’s going for that? Oh. 

Oh, abso-fucking-lutely. 

She nods at him and lets her head rest back on the table, squirming against his hands. He pulls down her underwear and tosses them over his shoulder with a lopsided grin that makes her laugh. His hands land back against her thighs and he works her skirt up to her waist, too quickly for her to really absorb before his head is between her legs and he’s kissing her, two day stubble rough against the crux of her legs. She moans and her hands clamp down on the edge of the table as her knees bend over his shoulders, her shoes digging into his back. 

“Ok, ouch, no,” he laughs, standing for long enough to tug her flats off, dropping them onto the floor and leaning back in, wrapping his arms around her thighs and lapping at her with the flat of his tongue, kissing her inner thighs, suddenly bent on teasing her. 

“Fuck,” she whimpers and he kisses her again, arms tightening around her thighs and pushing them towards her chest. He tongues her again, glancing across everything, a nearly vicious attack on her sanity. 

“Come on…” she hooks one leg across his shoulders, dragging him closer and bucking up towards his face. When he finally commits to touching her, she relaxes entirely, sighing against the table and whimpering as he swipes her with his tongue, long and slow. “There we go,” she eases up her grip on his hair, pushing the back of his head down instead and moaning as he starts to suck at her purposefully, lapping at her clit determined and wrapping both arms tighter around her thighs.

He teases the spot with pursed lips and she nearly sobs, the last few weeks all hitting at once as she stretches and strains against his grip. The touch is the same, steady, kind, warm, hitting all the right spots like he knows her, inside and out. It doesn’t matter whether it’s her spine of apparently, her more intimate parts, he can find the solution without issue.

“What…what else do you need?” He asks, breath ghosting across sensitive dampness and earning a long, low moan.

“Fingers?” She asks, bucking against his grip and sighing when one arm unwinds and two long digits slide easily into her. “And what you were just doing,” she nods, biting her lip and stilling herself when he continues, lips firm and insistent against her clit as his fingers start curling inside of her, anything but clumsy. “Yeah, that. Don’t stop…” she tosses her head back and forth, eyes squinted shut as she reaches for his shoulders, hands scrabbling across soft skin and lean muscle, fisting in the crisp cotton of his shirt and relishing in the wrinkles. 

He sucks hard at her clit, just rough enough, and she clenches and tightens around his fingers, arching halfway off of the table and clenching her hands around its wooden lip. It’s not like this with hookups, with the fast necessity that comes right before she kicks them out of her bed. It’s clenching and desperate and deep.

She relaxes with a drawn out sigh, flopping back and wincing at the hard oak against her shoulders as she tries to uncurl her clenched tight toes.

“Alright?” He asks with a lazy grin and her legs slither down his sides, clenching at his hips on the way down as she sits up straight and reaches for the ground, lips clumsily gnashing with his. 

“Great,” she nods, reaching her feet towards the ground and pressing herself against his front, dropping to her knees and grasping his belt, fumbling with the suddenly complicated clasp. 

“Wait,” he grasps her shoulders and tugs her upwards, breathing too hard and trying to hold his bottom lip between his teeth. “Wait, just—can we?—” His hands tug so gently at her shoulders and she stands, pausing to adjust her skirt around her hips. “I drank too much.” 

“Are you ok?” Her knees are still shaking slightly and she rests one hand on his shoulder, nudging his chin with the other until he’s looking at her. He sheepishly avoids eye contact, gaze flicking between her forehead and her ear and the tip of her nose. She strokes his jaw and he clenches his teeth, wincing before he even opens his mouth. 

“I think I need to sober up a bit. Coffee?” She almost wants to say no, because this is putting the brakes on everything and she wants more. 

“Yeah, I’d have some coffee.” 

00000


	10. Bang

00000

Chapter 10: Bang

00000

“Yeah, I’d have some coffee.”

“Ok,” he nods, his hands sliding down the backs of her arms as he looks sheepishly over her shoulder. She follows his gaze and sees her underwear, black and scandalous on the white tile floor of his kitchen. “Coffee, right.”

“Can I help?” She kisses his cheek on impulse and his mouth flaps wordlessly for a second before he shakes his head. 

“I think I know where my coffee-maker is better than you do,” and he’s smiling again, stroking the back of her waist and sighing. He’s a little pale, aside from distractingly damp, pink lips and she refrains from reminding him that beer before liquor is never a good idea. He already knows. “Sit down, uh, make yourself at home, I guess.” 

“Ok,” she pulls away from him slowly, turning to stare at her underwear for a moment before leaving them there and sliding onto one of the simple, wooden stools underneath his counter. His kitchen has a tile island with a thick wooden countertop serving as a bar. She runs her hands across the wood and it’s filled with a million little grooves, like he spends a lot of time writing or drawing on the surface. “Are you sure you don’t need any help?”

“No, I mean yep. I don’t need any help.” God, he’s adorable. From the delicious line of his shoulders down to the way his crisp cotton shirt is crumpled and grooved around his narrow waist. The back of his neck is flushed an unhealthy pink and what she can see of his forearms is milk pale, his hands moving slowly across the counter and flicking on the sink to fill the back of the coffee pot. She licks her lips, and it must be too loud because he glances at her and presses the on-button, looking almost petrified for a moment as he sips from a glass of water she didn’t notice him filling, she was so distracted by his ass. “I don’t do this.” 

“Don’t do what? Make coffee?”

“No, take girls home, I—”

“We don’t have to do anything else if you don’t want to,” she suggests, grin tugging at the corner of her mouth. 

“It’s just been a while.” He admits, but it doesn’t slow her down. Why would it? 

“I do have a favor to return.” 

He blinks at her. 

“Milk, sugar?”

“Honey, babe,” she leans further over the counter, smiling when he looks down the front of her shirt, if only briefly.

“For your coffee.” He drags his eyes back to her face, knuckles white against the edge of the counter.

“You actually have milk in your fridge?” She laughs, climbing off of the stool and stumbling slightly as she goes to check what other wonders he’s hiding from her. Her hands sneak a glimpse at his ass one more time before dragging open the handle to the fridge and grinning. “Eggs, milk, cheese…is that celery in your vegetable drawer?” She bends over and opens the crisper, laughing. “Celery and carrots, where’s your root cellar, Daddy Warbucks?”

“The contents of my fridge are impressive?” He laughs, setting down his water and stepping over to her to open the freezer. “You’ll love this, extra loaf of bread in the freezer.”

“Take me now.”

He shoves her up against the wall and kisses her, rougher still this time and tasting vaguely of her, hand sliding down to her waist and thigh, hooking it around his hip and grinding against her. Fuck, she can feel him, feel what was just in her hand through the thick denim of his jeans, and it’s pressing against her skirt, pushing it up further, her whole leg almost bare against his side.

She thinks of how if she could get his zipper down, there’d be nothing between them. He could press her into the wall and—

His hand starts sliding up the back of her leg and she moans as he brushes the hem of her skirt, making him brave enough to slip underneath and grab a handful of her rear. Her hands wiggle between them, fighting with the top button of his shirt and eventually yanking, sending three or four plinking off of the fridge and counter.

The skin underneath is so smooth, so impossibly warm and she struggles to unbutton the next two before the timer on the coffee pot goes off and he pulls back with a quiet curse.

“Milk and sugar?” He asks again, running a hand back through his messed up hair and reopening the fridge, avoiding eye contact while Astrid tugs her skirt down over her thighs and waits for jelly knees to come back to themselves. 

“Black.”

“All that going crazy over my milk for nothing?” He smiles and pours her coffee into a small mug he sets on the counter. 

She stares at it for a second before choosing him instead, stepping up and reaching for his shirt. “You look ridiculous, hanging on by two buttons.” 

He catches her hands and stops her, flushing slightly. “What? What’s wrong?” 

“Not…I still need a break, I—you’re really perfect.” 

She looks back down his chest, wiry and sculpted, peppered with sparse auburn hair that condenses into a trail under his barely visible navel. “You’re pretty perfect too.”

She wonders if he drank too much. It happens, he might be far enough gone that the plumbing isn’t really working right and often maligned whiskey dick is stepping in on their evening. She opens her mouth to tell him that she doesn’t care, she can wait, but he cuts her off. 

“No, I’m really not. And you’re legitimately…you don’t—I’m not perfect. I’m gangly and freckled, two things that everyone always told me I’d grow out of, and—ouch.” She punches him in the arm and he glares at her. “What was that for?”

“I didn’t somehow get this far without realizing you were gangly and had freckles.”

“It looked better when I was younger,” he tries to step away and brush her off and she clamps tight to his wrists. “No, really, I apparently had it going on, college was great but at some point I lost any game I ever had.” He looks at her for a too long moment before biting his lip. “And there’s something else it’s—”

“We don’t have to do anything else,” she repeats, shaking her head. “We could drink some coffee and go sit on your couch and—What am I saying?” What is she saying? She’s been looking forward to this for weeks, thinking about it and… “I’m saying that we don’t have to do anything else.” 

“I have this scar.” 

“A scar?” She looks at his chest, and it’s all smooth milky skin, absolutely pristine aside from a patch of auburn hair, freckle free compared to the mottled skin of his arms. Her hand lands gently in the middle of chest and he shudders. “I’m an athlete, Hiccup,” the familiarity seems right, “I’ve seen my fair share of scars.” 

“It’s not…I didn’t scrape my knee or—it’s just bad, alright?” 

“Where is it?” 

“It’s not show and tell—”

“Now you’re starting to worry me. Now maybe I need to call the cab back and take you to the hospital.” She looks towards the door and his hands land on her shoulders, tugging her a little closer. 

“It’s a scar, not a gaping wound. I just…I thought I should warn you, or something?” He shakes his head, “that’s stupid, it’s just. Gah, here,” he grabs her hand and bites his lip, sliding it over his shoulder to his back. “It’s right down the middle there.” 

She takes advantage of the chance to grope his shoulder, grasping at the dense wiry muscles and skimming her fingers slowly to the top of his spine. 

“I don’t feel anything.” 

“Down, just a little bit.” 

“Down?” She follows his direction, skimming down the line of his spine fingers finally dragging across a thick, ropey scar. “Oh—”

“Sorry—”

“Stop apologizing,” she snaps, a little too harsh and he steps away from her, wiping his hands across his face. “No, hey, I didn’t mean to be so…” she follows him and rests her forehead against his, reaching back to find the scar again. “Just what happened?”

“Scoliosis surgery, when I was in high school,” he professes, staring in the vague direction of her ankle.

“Can I see it?” Her fingers sweep across the line again, trying to see how far down it goes, and he twitches under the contact.

“Astrid—”

“Hey, I like scars. I think they’re sort of hot,” she admits against his temple, feeling oddly intimate as she presses a kiss to the slightly clammy skin. “Please?”

“Alright,” he sighs after a moment, turning slowly and fumbling the last two buttons of his shirt. He lets it fall to the floor revealing a thin, long healed scar spanning the length of his now straight spine, white and well healed other than a protrusion towards the back of his neck and a dimple in his lower back. It’s not quite vertical, instead jagging right towards his shoulder, a few inches off of his vertebrae. She traces the line with a fingertip before leaning forward and planting a kiss against the mark, almost on reflex, trying to stop him from shaking. The shaking is driving her crazy.

He gasps and she does it again, tongue darting out to taste his skin.

“It’s sexy.”

“Don’t flatter me—”

“No, really. I like it,” she insists, but he’s still stiff under her fingers and she taps his shoulder until he looks back around. “Here, I have one too,” she pulls her shirt up her stomach and shows him a clean white line on her stomach. “I got my appendix out was I was thirteen. I refused to wear a bikini for years.”

“You should never wear anything but a bikini,” he blurts before wiping a hand across his face. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—I just…”

“Come here,” she laughs. “You can’t say things like that, you’ve been driving me crazy for a month, you can’t start picturing me in a bikini when you aren’t touching me.” He turns back around, serious and positively needy as he kisses her cheek, hand ghosting down her side to thumb at the thin white scar. His fingers are impossibly long, sliding underneath the side of her shirt and stroking the side of her waist. 

“A whole month?” He pulls her against him and glances at the cup of coffee on the counter. Her hands land on his lower back and lace together, flirting with his belt. “I probably still need that coffee.” 

“Yeah,” she sighs, not quite willing to let go somehow. God, this is pathetic, he isn’t even touching anything, not really, and her entire stomach is on fire and churning. “I’m still a little out of sorts too.” And she pulls back far enough to smirk at him, “I want to be alert for this.” 

“What is this?” He leans down and picks up his shirt, ignoring her pointed frown and tugging it over his shoulders, watching her too closely as she walks back to her seat and takes a first warm sip from the coffee mug. “Good?”

“Delicious.”

She doesn’t know which of his questions she’s answering, and he doesn’t ask for clarification.

She flinches when something lands feather light on her lap and looks down at the small black cat winding his way through her arms and onto the counter.

“Toothless,” Hiccup hisses, moving to pick him up before faltering and petting his head with an almost stern hand. “Sorry, he’s not supposed to be on the counter, but—”

“No, I get it, he’s spoiled. All happy pets are spoiled.” She looks at him through her eyelashes, taking another gulp of coffee and wiping her chapstick off of the side of the cup. Hiccup flushes for what must be the fiftieth time tonight and she scratches the cat’s back as he drags his tail past her face. “When you say it’s been a while…how long is a while?”

He scratches the back of his neck, drinking out of his own mug and stalling for a moment by scratching Toothless in a way that makes him purr loudly enough to break the silence. He buttoned his shirt back up as far as it would go after she modified it, but it’s only halfway and somehow enough skin to be truly distracting. 

“I was still in school.” He shrugs, glancing up at her nervously. “So…a year? Maybe two?”

“Ouch,” she hisses, “so maybe we went a little fast?”

“Little bit.”

“Nothing? For years?” She shakes her head, and drains her mug, unsure whether this is better or worse with some of the buzz blasted away. He looks better, more grounded, the red streaks in his hair standing out.

“And this is scaring you off more than the scar. Didn’t see that one coming--”

“No, I just—hey, it’s been a couple of years since I was last in a relationship. And…like I said, I like you. I don’t do that very often.” Toothless sprawls out on the counter and stretches his back legs towards Astrid, begging for attention. “How long have you had him?”

“Only about a year. I was out here looking at the practice and thinking about buying and, I don’t know, the animal shelter just looked so sad. He was the last cat on the row and he hissed at me,” a soft smile she can’t quite decipher, “well, we made a connection.”

Astrid grins, unsure of what to say as she smiles up at him, feeling goofy and a few years younger than she is. Talking to the cute boy in the corner of math class. 

“This is the worst one-night stand ever, isn’t it?” He says, leaning back against the counter and pushing his hand back through his hair. 

“I like you.”

“I like you too,” he picks up her cup and gestures at it with small nod. “More?”

“I’m alright.”

“I’m glad.” He turns back to the counter and finishes his glass of water, setting the empty cup in the sink. 

“You’re going to miss out on the crazy drunk sex then,” Astrid tries to joke and he flushes deeper, setting both mugs, both empty, in the sink. “If you want, I don’t want to pressure you or anything…”

“It’s just been a while, I…”

“Hey, you’re already doing great,” she grins and crosses her legs, glancing at her underwear, still on the floor. “You know I was joking about returning the favor…but if you wanted to…”

“That’s an open ended offer.” He gives her a wry smile that lights everything on fire.

“I’m just trying to get the ball rolling.”

“Bedroom? If you want.”

She nods in agreement, sliding off of the stool and jokingly gesturing him down the hallway. There are two closed doors she doesn’t ask about and a small master bedroom attached to a clean bathroom with a night light plugged into the wall, a bluish glow over the porcelain. The bed is queen sized and unmade with three fluffy pillows stacked on one side below the simple wooden headboard. A pair of jeans and a few unbuttoned shirts are on the floor next to the hamper and he mutters to himself, rushing to pick them up. “Sorry—”

“Really, stop apologizing for everything,” she steps forward and fists her hands in his shirt, standing on tip toes and looking him in the eyes. He reaches back to shut the door, cutting off some of the light and sending a striking shadow across his face. He licks his lips and leans in to kiss her, just gentle and sweet enough to drive her absolutely mad.

She grabs his wrist and slides his hand up her back, under her shirt, pressing it there before leaning up to wrap both arms around his neck and stretch towards his mouth, everything pressed against him. He pauses for a moment before grabbing her shirt and tugging it up, knuckles glancing up the line of her spine as he pulls back just far enough to pull it over her head. He looks down at her briefly before diving in and mouthing the side of her neck, smoothing his hands across the new expanses of bare skin as his hair tickles against her jaw. 

It’s not the reaction she’d imagined, prone on the padded table in front of him; it’s better. Like she’s appreciated and wanted and astounding. She scrambles to get his shirt back off, wondering why she ever let him get it on again and kissing along the strong jaw she’s been staring at far too much, nipping at his earlobe. He urges her towards the bed and she falls back, tugging him over her and trying to scoot them towards the center of the bed. 

“I’ve been trying so hard not to think about this.” 

“What a self-esteem boost,” she laughs huskily, head falling back against the mattress as he kisses down her chest, reaching around to struggle with her bra clasp. It takes him a moment, whether because she’s laying on his hands or he’s out of practice and he growls in frustration, nipping at the side of her neck.

“That having to grope you was the worst day of my life?” He finally frees her bra and tugs it down her arms, palming her chest and pinching her pebbling nipple between gentle, long fingers.

“Mmm, Hiccup…” It slips out, husky and contented, and he pauses. She gropes at his back and shoulders, tracing along the long, thin scar and arching underneath him.

“You can’t go with Hugo? You’re really going with Hiccup here?” He wrinkles his nose against her shoulder and she laughs. “Hiccup isn’t exactly sexy.”

“So Dr. Haddock next time?” She can feel his blush, travelling halfway down his chest. “You said your friends call you Hiccup.”

“Doesn’t this kind of pass the bounds of friends?”

“Are you always this chatty?” He looks up at her, breath hot against the center of her chest and she cards her hand through his hair before really thinking about it. He smiles, and she doesn’t want him to look so damn nervous. “Turn over.” 

“What?—oof.” 

She pushes on his shoulders and rolls over on top of him, straddling his thighs and unfastening his belt. 

“You’re wearing too many clothes,” she pries the button of his pants open and unzips him, leaning down and kissing across his chest as he catches on and wiggles out of them, kicking them onto the floor. Her hand slides down his chest, slipping under his boxers and grasping him. She swallows his moan in a searing kiss, pumping his length and squeezing experimentally. His fingernails dig into her waist and she pulls away with a grin. 

She kisses down his chest and he shivers, hands sliding up to her shoulders and gripping almost cautiously. She licks the sharp line of his hipbone and tugs his boxers down to his thighs before ducking down and sucking him unceremoniously into her mouth. He groans and his hands clamp down on her shoulders, holding her still. 

“Shit.” He groans, twitching against her tongue as she holds onto his hipbones and bobbing her head slowly, tongue laving against the underside of him. He shivers and one hand falls heavy onto the bed, fisting in the tangled sheets. 

He pushes her off of him with the hand still clamped on her shoulder and she cocks her head, licking her lips and looking up at him. 

“What’s wrong?” 

“Roll over,” he fumbles with the zipper on the side of her skirt, yanking it down and throwing it over his shoulder as she rolls onto her back and settles into the mound of pillows at the head of the bed. 

“Do you have something?”

“What?”

“Do you have protection?” She repeats the question, wide eyed and alarmed at the thought of this being cut short. 

“Protection—Oh! Oh, yeah, I do,” he laughs and looks down at her, face falling stony. “Just a second,” he sits and rummages through a small bedside table, ripping off a crackly foil square and tearing it open. She spreads her knees, waving him towards her. 

“I left mine at home,” she laughs, “I didn’t want to do this tonight.” 

“Er…you didn’t?”

“Not with anyone but you,” she snaps and he stares at her, slack-jawed and oddly adorable. 

“Really?”

“Get up here, seriously.”

“I can’t believe this is happening.” He follows her, torn open packet in hand as he kneels beside her and she starts wrenching at the waistband of his boxers, yanking them down past his ass and squeezing his cheek hard enough to make him jump.

“Me either,” she helps him drag the boxers the rest of the way down, biting her lip as he rolls the condom on with slow, careful fingers, smoothing it along his shaft. “I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. Really.”

“No pressure,” he winces below the joke and she grabs his arm, dragging him over her and hooking a heel around the back of his thigh.

“I like you,” she repeats, smoothing her hand down his back and tugging him closer, reaching between them to line him up. She nods, and he nudges forward, eyes falling shut as he slips in that first inch. He pauses, kissing her, and she deepens it, tangling her tongue with his and drawing him closer, hands clasping behind his shoulders. “Stop teasing me…”

He sinks all of the way in with a groan, fingernails digging into her shoulder as he adjusts, starting a slow, smooth rhythm. Almost leisurely, a stroll instead of that one-night stand sprint. She moans and starts rocking underneath him, and everything snaps into a shockingly smooth tandem with an almost audible click. He groans into her neck and reaches down to grab her hip, tugging her into him as he mouths at slightly salty skin. She bites down on his shoulder, locking her ankle around his hip and clenching.

“God, Astrid, I—” he groans and kisses her, sloppy and panting against her mouth, lips winding together.

“Go,” she nods against him, head falling back against the pillows as it all starts to build again, stoked and frenzied by that sweet spot deep inside. She reaches between them, finding her still hyper-sensitive bud and rubbing, fingers glancing across him as his thrusts become erratic and determined, panting against her shoulder taking her breath away.

He bucks suddenly, grunting into her ear, impossibly hot as he throbs inside of her, hips twitching deeper. His sound is enough, the warm, solid weight landing against her chest, and she bucks against him, her heel digging into his back hard enough to bruise.

He sags on top of her, panting into the pillows and shaking, but this time it’s adorable somehow and she wraps tight arms around his back, squeezing him close. Her fingers find the scar again, stroking it slowly, looping slow circles around both ends before riding the smooth slope in the middle. She wonders if his cat sleeps in his bed with him, and why she doesn’t really mind. He rolls off of her with a sigh and she gives him a moment of privacy to clean himself up, accepting an almost sheepishly offered tissue and wiping herself clean.

“I think I might have jerked your hip out of alignment.”

“Did you seriously just say that?” Astrid stares at the ceiling for a minute before laughing, hand covering her mouth. “Sorry just—seriously?”

“It might hurt in the morning.” 

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” she turns towards him, thinking for a moment before curling into his shoulder and resting her head on his arm. “That was nice.” 

“I just made an ass of myself, didn’t I?” His hand wraps around her waist and strokes at the lowest ridge of her ribs, ticklish and warm. 

“Can…” her voice drops and she looks away from him, hoping that bringing this up doesn’t shatter the pleasant quiet. “Can you get me that list of referrals again if it’s a problem? I deleted the voicemail.” 

“I’ll leave my own voicemail…as a friend. Just a doctor friend referring you to a few better doctors.” 

“I doubt they’re better.” She carefully kisses the well of his collarbone, trying to tell what’s different about this. She’s not normally a cuddler, but his shoulder is somehow better than the pillows. 

“Better for you.” He mutters and she hopes it’s sealed. “Are you comfortable?” He tugs her a bit closer and she can feel his hot breath against the top of her head, close and soft and welcome.

“Yeah,” she really is. Absolutely comfortable, too sweet drunk breath already covered with rich coffee and her headache is utterly ignorable, pushed to the back of her mind. “Are we going to see each other again?” she rolls halfway over and rests her chin on his chest to look him in the eye. 

“Don’t tell me you’re just going to disappear.” 

“I’m just making sure you don’t want me to.” She looks away, because this is suddenly more unfamiliar than the cuddling itself. 

“Are you asking me on a date?” He grins, hand sliding up between her shoulder blades and lingering.

“I didn’t say that. I just said I want to see you again.”

“I’m hearing a date,” he grins, and it’s breakable. It’s a handshake, like he’s trusting her with his heart or something. Like this is already important. “Is this a date?”

“If that’s what you’re insisting on calling it,” she wrinkles her nose like she doesn’t care. “Then it’s a date.”

00000


	11. Bounce

00000

Chapter 11: Bounce

00000

Hiccup wakes up on his back, slightly confused, head pounding. He’s been a side sleeper ever since he could be and he shifts, squinting against the sunlight and thinking about rolling away from the window. Something tightens around his waist and he opens his eyes, looking down at a crown of blonde hair against his shoulder and a long, lean arm across his chest.

Astrid.

Right, Astrid is here and last night…last night.

Oh wow.

Oh shit and oh wow. 

Toothless gets up from his spot at the edge of the bed and walks towards him, rubbing the side of his face on Hiccup’s unoccupied shoulder and leaping to the bedside coffee table. The cat sits down and stares, meowing quietly and looking at Astrid’s head. She rouses at the noise and tucks herself closer into his shoulder, breath hot and damp against his chest.

“I know, I said I wasn’t going to do this. But I did it. Shit.” He bites his lip and shakes his head, flinching when she stirs against him. “But it’s not—she’s not my patient,” he hisses at the cat’s judgmental face. “Can you give me—us—a little bit of privacy, bud?”

Toothless mewls again and Hiccup rolls his eyes, shrugging under Astrid’s weight and staring at her as she slings her sleepy leg around his. “Seriously. I’d kind of like to be the first thing she sees in the morning, even if you’re cuter.” He manages a small, nervous smile when the cat purrs in response before jumping down from the table and trotting out into the hallway.

Hiccup looks down at Astrid again, face almost entirely obscured by hair aside from the tip of her nose, throwing a stark shadow against his chest. She’s still beautiful, even mostly hidden, and he strokes a careful hand across the line of her shoulders, bare and peeking out from beneath the sheets. He pushes her hair carefully over her shoulder and strokes the nape of her neck, the delicate curve of her upper back, drifting sideways over the slanted lines of her shoulder blades.

How did he manage this one again?

This is the stupidest thing he’s ever done. 

She’s not his patient anymore. She’s not. 

Still, how did he do this? Sure, in college he was…lucky. Frequently lucky even, but it was never worth repeating, there was never the connection.

He surely never dabbled about waking them up, wondering if there’s some magic morning after word to make sure that talk of dates from the night before doesn’t get pushed under the rug permanently. That she’ll wake up as Astrid and not his patient. 

His whole arm is asleep from the weight of her head on his shoulder, but he’s not about to say anything about it. She’s breathing slowly, a melodious sort of half snore ruffling her hair against his chest. She looks oddly right there, fitting into a groove that he didn’t know he had and curling into him.

He starts stroking her shoulder again, tickling down her arm to the inside of her wrist, where he traces pale blue veins in the sunlight. She snorts, and pulls her hand back slightly, resting it in the center of his chest, elbow caught up in the comforter. He cranes his neck upwards, to the extent of his limited flexibility and barely manages a kiss to the crown of her head. She smells good, like surprisingly sweet shampoo and a tinge of salt from last night, barely mixed with the scent of his detergent, like she belongs here.

It strikes him that she might not remember the date she suggested, that she might not want this sort of…thing. He can see her waking up and laying down boundaries, horrible boundaries. 

If she weren’t sprawled across him, he’d consider getting up, getting dressed, maybe running down the street for coffee and breakfast and definitely splashing some cool water on his face, but he’s trapped. It’s the absolute best kind of trapped, especially with her slowly waking up, arching and stretching, pressing her impossibly soft chest against his side. His hand drifts back to her shoulders, stroking in aimless circles until she groans awake and pushes her hair away from her face with the hand on his chest, shielding her eyes from the sun.

She looks around for a second, hand planted in the middle of his chest before her eyes settle on him and widen slightly. 

“Good morning.” 

“Morning,” she pushes crazy hair away from her face and squints towards the window, “ugh, I drank too much, how are you doing?” 

“Hungover?” He recognizes her tone and she groans, nodding and flopping back down against him, point of her chin digging into his chest. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

“I’ve been better” she tightens her leg around his, half stretch and half pulling herself closer. “I don’t even know if the coffee was a good idea, now it’s a caffeine headache too.”

His hand finds her shoulder and rubs slowly and she croons, stiffening momentarily under his touch before giving in and falling utterly slack against him.

“You remember coffee, that’s the good news.”

“I remember everything,” she says in a slightly gravelly voice, reaching across his chest and stroking the stark line of his collarbone. He swallows hard. “What? Are you still nervous this morning?” She peeks out of the blankets and flinches immediately at the light, shrinking back into hiding. “Just let me go get some water, and we’ll continue this conversation.”

“I’ll get you some water,” he offers, letting go of her shoulder, and she peers up at him. 

“You don’t have to get me water.” 

“I need some too, I’ll be right back.” He doesn’t tell her that he’s a little too focused on regaining blood flow in his arm and she backs off with a suspicious look. “And I’ll shut the blinds. I didn’t think to do it last night.”

“Thank you,” she says it sincerely before grinning at him. “Hiccup.”

“And you had to remember that.”

“I wasn’t that drunk.”

“You’re hungover,” he reminds her and she shrugs, curling the blanket further around herself.

“I’m dehydrated.”

“I’ll be right back,” he scoots to the edge of the bed, suddenly self-conscious before standing and letting the sheets fall. He glances back and she’s grinning at him, comforter tugged up over her chest. “What?”

“I’m looking.”

“Why are you looking?” He reaches for his boxers on the floor where they landed the night before and she shrugs like it’s obvious. 

“Because it’s nice, don’t cover it up.”

He reaches back to touch the dimpled scar low on his back and she shakes her head. “That’s nice too. Really.”

“You’re demanding, wanting water and a show first thing in the morning.” He’s glad he’s half hard, a semi-enthusiastic morning wood too sleep drugged to notice the real naked girl in the bed nearby. He figures it isn’t as presumptuous as standing at attention, but less embarrassing than being flaccid in front of her. He’s not ready for that, he doesn’t know if he’d ever be ready for that.

Part of his brain is still stuck in the realm where he can never, ever be ready for that. 

“Seriously, thank you for the water,” her face is suddenly serious, eyes locked on his. 

“It’s just water. I’m joking, it’s not a big deal.”

“You can’t be real,” her eyes drift back down to his ass, brightening immediately when he twists the blinds closed and dips the room into darkness.

“Are you still drunk?” He laughs and glances at her again, all ruffled blonde and sheet lines stretched across pale cheeks smudged with last night’s makeup. Still irrationally beautiful. His hands itch with the fact that he can touch her.

“No,” she lays back down on his pillow, and it’s better than he imagined it, seeing her there. She cranes her neck to look around to his front and he hustles to the bathroom, rinsing out the cup on the counter and filling it with cool water. He chugs it once and refills it, ignoring the fact that she gets an eyeful when he walks back in and manages half of a seductive grin before she turns her gaze to the water. “Thanks,” she takes the cup and chugs it, swishing the last gulp around in her mouth and swallowing it back with a grin. “So much better.”

“I’m glad, is the dark helping too?”

She nods and sits up and tosses the sheets off of herself, a little ungainly as she swings her feet over the side of the bed and stands. It’s not anywhere near bright in the room, he invested in good blinds for that East facing window, but there’s more light than last night and apparently a whole lot that he didn’t appreciate properly the night before.

When he drags his eyes back to her face she’s smiling knowingly, and he recognizes the expression from his office. God, he must have been obvious.

He needs to not think of the office. He thinks of her in the bar last night, adorably embarrassed about her actions and eager. He clings to that image. 

“Bathroom?” She points at the door to the attached tile room, more as an exit line than an actual question and he nods dumbly.

He remembers when he could perk up that quickly after a hangover, when he spent all night drinking ouzo in Athens and somehow made his four-thirty AM train to Poland the next day without needing someone to come along with him holding a bucket. Part of him envies her, and the other part is terrified, because they haven’t set a date in stone and he’s never felt this old and stodgy before. 

She said it like a secret. I like you, like it really meant something, and he believed her. He wonders if she remembers that part of the night and she’s needlessly embarrassed or something. Or more likely, she doesn’t remember it at all, if she does, it’s a line, and he can’t even bring himself to regret getting played.

And God, that was smooth. Avoiding him for a week and giving him all those referrals as some sort of elaborate scheme. And then when she apologized—No, Astrid’s smart, but this is an evil genius level sort of plan. 

What if she actually likes him? Likes him. 

He picks up his boxers and pulls them on, flushing a bit as he sets her silky, tiny underwear on the foot of the bed along with her skirt, shirt, and bra that he finds scattered by the foot of the bed. One side of the bed is nearly pristine, sheet still tucked in at the bottom and it strikes him that she didn’t really claim a side, instead sleeping on him.

It makes the whole rendez-vous feel less permanent somehow and he sighs, ruffling through his closet for a tee-shirt. Something old and comforting that he doesn’t mind spilling beer and motor oil on as he spends the rest of the afternoon out in the garage, trying to forget pale, perfect skin and coffee aftertaste against his tongue.

Maybe it’s best he remembers that she’s off-limits. Maybe that’d be better, for everyone. 

“Oh.”

He turns to see her and she’s standing in the bathroom doorway, small frown on a pink, flushed face. The skin around her eyes is slightly red, presumably from scrubbing the black make-up off, and it makes her look younger, more vulnerable. This doesn’t feel wrong at all, it’s right enough to scare him. 

“Those are all the clothes you had, right?” He looks away before his eyes have a chance to drift down and make him look like a…like his interest isn’t legitimate. Who looks like that? Honestly, it’s almost cruel, with her being so long and lean and perky and perfect and he’s over here all angles and legs and one long scar.

God, how long does he have until she notices that scar sober and…and he doesn’t know. But it will surely slay him. 

“Yeah,” she shrugs and steps forward towards the pile, digging through it for her underwear and sliding them on with a little flick of her hips. He smiles in spite of the fact that she’s getting ready to go.

“I did knock you out of whack a little bit. Sorry about that.”

She shrugs and glances up at him, shoulders hunched forward in a way that makes him think she’s mad. For some reason. Maybe he was awful, and she was expecting him to make it up to her this morning or something. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, nothing.” She picks up her bra and starts untangling it, looping her arms through the straps and reaching behind herself to fasten it.

“Does your back hurt or something? I’m sure I couldn’t have been the most comfortable pillow,” he winces and gestures to the bony point of his shoulder.

“No—actually, yes. My back sort of hurts.” She finishes clasping her extremely flattering black bra and turns her back to face him. 

“Here,” he steps up behind her, resting his hands on the smooth skin of her waist. She inhales sharply and mutters something under her breath. “What was that?”

“We’re still on for our drinks, right?”

“Of course,” he grins and squeezes her waist a little tighter, a little more confident. “What does that have to do with anything?” 

“Never mind,” She shrugs and smiles over her shoulder at him, brightening and standing up straighter. “I’m fine, maybe a little muscle sore, but that’s it—ooh.” She moans as he starts rubbing an obvious tightness in her trapezius.

He shifts away from her slightly, angling his hips away from her ass. That’s what she sounded like last night and all he can remember is her legs around his ears on the kitchen table. Half-mast is feeling a little more like ready to set sail.

“You…you don’t have to head out so quick if you don’t want to, you know.” He offers quietly and she stiffens under his hands, glancing back over her shoulder.

“Then what’s with the pile of clothes,” she gestures to her wrinkled shirt hanging off of the foot of the bed.

“I thought you wanted to leave.”

“I thought you were kicking me out.”

“I’d never kick you out.”

“That’s not exactly true,” she tries to joke, “you’ve already kicked me out once.”

“Best decision ever.” He smirks and she stares at him for a second before smiling and turning around. His hands slide off of her back and land against his thighs and he crosses his fingers that she doesn’t look down. She bites her lip and glances around the room.

“What do you want to do?”

Everything in his pants twitches.

“I don’t know, we could have breakfast or—”

“No, I’m not ready to leave the dark room yet,” she cuts him off and glances towards the bed, knocking her knee against his. The suggestion is too surprising to be obvious and he raises his eyebrows. She laughs and steps away from him, crawling back into the bed in her underwear and curling up with her head on the previously unused pillow. “If you want.”

“I’ll bite,” he smiles at her and walks around the bed, crawling into his side. There. Now she claimed half of it. “So you mentioned drinks.” He wants so badly to call it a date, but he’s not feeling as brave as last night. She’s more intimidating now somehow, sleepy eyed and comfortable, black bra strap stark against her shoulder and reminding him how close to naked she is.

“You still want to go, don’t you?” She smiles at him and scoots closer, freeing her arm from the comforter and dragging his eyes down towards her chest. He never really fixated on it while she was clothed somehow, the whole package was a little distracting, but he’s finding himself a bit too focused now. She stretches her arms over her head and flops back on her back, closing her eyes.

If she’s nervous, it doesn’t look like it.

“Of course.”

“What? You aren’t going to tease me by calling it a date?” She grins and edges imperceptibly sideways, her shoulder grazing his. He rolls onto his side and cautiously loops his arm around her waist through the blankets. She stiffens and slowly opens her eyes, looking sideways at him. “You’re still after a date aren’t you?”

“Absolutely,” he grins when she flushes and tugs her closer to him, inhaling sharply. “And everything that entails. I’m going to pick you up and—”

“My roommate can threaten you. It’ll be great.” She snorts and her hands slowly find the arm across her front, stroking along with the hair. “Maybe…maybe we should go get breakfast. My head is feeling better,” she sits up and sighs, looking back down at him. “But maybe that’s just from laying down.”

She flops back, curving onto her side facing away from him and backing up into the crux of his body, back curved against his chest. His arm falls across her waist almost reflexively and she shifts, trying to get comfortable as he slides one hand under her pillow.

Like that’s ever going to work.

“Here, move the pillow a bit, maybe it can save you from the bony.” He lifts his head and tries to do it with his cheek and she butts her hips back against his.

“It’s comfortable.”

“Oh, really, because I—”

“Really.” She cuts him off and seems to relax, hands falling again to his forearm, this time stroking over the bones of his wrist. He can feel her hip against his elbow even through the comforter, sharp and cut by the waistband of her underwear.

That really can’t be comfortable.

He wants to make this easier and better and turn it into something that she’ll want to do again. He sheepishly leans forward and kisses the back of her head. She’s rigid for a moment before settling further into him, her heart beating shallow and a little too fast against his chest.

“When were you thinking for that date?—”

“There it is.”

“Seriously,” he squeezes her and it feels like a habit, her golden hair tickling his nose. She must have fixed it in the bathroom too, it’s lying smooth over the pillow, slightly wavy out of its thick braid. He almost kisses it again, biting his lip and tugging her closer, curling his legs around hers. “When would you want to…go out?”

She laughs.

“You don’t have to be so formal about it, really. It’s just drinks, we could go after this if you wanted.” She shifts against him, and her breath puffs against the crux of his elbow. “But that does defeat the whole purpose of trying to make sure I see you again.”

“You were making sure you’d get to see me again?” He grins and pops up slightly, buffeting her head down his arm and she glares at him, until he returns her pillow to its rightful place. “I’m flattered.”

“Don’t be,” she presses her face into the pillow. “It’s—I like you.”

“I like you too,” he inches a little closer and she perks up slightly.

“I can feel how much you like me.”

Of course.

He pulls his hips away from hers with a nervous laugh and she rolls over to face him, wrapping a leg around his hips. “I’m not complaining.”

“I just didn’t mean to,” he laughs again as she trails her hand down his ribs, fiddling with the trail of auburn hair leading down from his navel. “But you’re going for it, ok—”

“What? You don’t want to?” She pulls back, blue eyes wide and he catches himself.

“Oh, I want to,” he cups the back of her head and tugs her into him, kissing her. She bows into him, and he wonders how women stand bras all day with the crescent shaped wires pressing tight to his chest. He can’t stand her bra now. It has to come off.

Her hands fist in her hair and he reaches behind her, fumbling with the clasp of her bra and undoing it faster than last night, pulling back long enough to yank it down her arms. She’s grins at him and wraps her arms around his neck, kissing him more deeply as her leg hooks fully around his back.

She rolls on top of him and grinds down against hips, legs tangled in the sheets.

“Anytime,” she mutters against his hair as he kisses down her neck, sucking briefly at her pulse point and groaning as she reaches into his boxers and grips his shaft. Her hand pumps once, twice, and she’s leaning off him towards the bed side table for the forgotten strip of condoms.

“Anytime, that’s pretty vague,” he sits up halfway and sucks her nipple into his mouth, jolting against her palm when she moans and holds him to her by his hair, fumbling the condom before tearing open the foil wrapper with her teeth.

“Shut up.”

“If you’re not careful, I’ll take anytime to heart,” he groans as she shoves his boxers halfway down his thighs and out of the way, rolling the condom down his length. He reaches for her underwear and pushes them down, catching her waist as she leans sideways to tug them over one foot.

“Oh no, my hot doctor is going to be trying to bang me all the time. The horror.”

He pauses completely, hand frozen against her waist. That should sound filthy and grimy and disgusting. He should feel like he’s violating her. 

But she called him hot. 

He grins. 

“Your hot doctor?”

“Don’t worry, you’re not my doctor anymore.” She reaches back to line herself up and he stalls her with long fingers, stroking her clit and slipping inside of her, testing her wetness. She moans and runs her free hand over his stomach.

“You called me your hot doctor? That was my title?” He pulls his hand away from her and grips her hips, holding her stable as she sinks down onto him with a sigh. “Like when you were on your way to an appointment, you told people that you were going to see your hot doctor?”

“My roommate called you Dr. Hottie,” she shifts her hips to engulf him completely. “It got really annoying.”

“I think I’ll like your roommate,” he laughs, pressing carefully up into her and flushing when her head lolls sideways and she starts to grind against him. 

“Oh god, shut up.” She grips his sides and bites her lip, eyes squinted shut. His hand finds her clit and starts rubbing in a tight circle and she bends forward, kissing his neck and panting into his ear.

He doesn’t last as long as he’d like to, but somehow manages to drag her over the edge with him, fingers clumsy against her in those last seconds of muscle clenching bliss. She flops down against his chest with a groan, panting and limp with her hands on his shoulders.

“I thought I was joking when I said anytime.”

His hand lands between her shoulder blades and strokes slightly and she whimpers. “Don’t stop that.” Her stomach rumbles between them and she shifts, obviously trying to ignore it.

“Breakfast?”

The pause lingers for a moment and he shifts, more nervous than he probably should be, considering she’s sweaty and draped over him.

“Yeah, and I guess I’ll walk home. Because your car is still at the bar.” She teases him, resting her nose against his cheek and laughing. 

“Right.” He sighs. “That’s what I get to deal with this morning.” 

“Come on, your morning wasn’t so horrible.” She bites her lip. “Friday.” 

“What about Friday?” 

“Pick me up on Friday,” she leans onto her elbow and thumps his chest with a casual palm. “Seven. Friday at seven.” 

“It’s a date.”

00000


End file.
